Moms at home run companies, kids
2.1 million U.S. women own home businesses; some bring in big bucks
Moms at home run companies, kids

By Paula Burkes Erickson

Published: May 12, 2007

Oklahoma City attorney Terri Thomas never planned to be a mother. She and her husband were married six and half years when Thomas learned she was pregnant with their daughter, now 4 months old.

"We never ruled out kids,” Thomas, 37, said. "But we never got to the point of saying ‘OK, we're ready to try.'”

Thomas, however, was sure of one thing: if she had children, she'd stay home with them. As a self-employed school attorney who works out of her house, Thomas has been able to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and maintain her professional work.

"It's challenging and scary,” Thomas said. Invariably, the phone rings at feeding time or when her daughter is fussing, she said. "But it's all worth it when I see her toothless smile and hear her laugh.”

How does she do it? Thomas plans her workdays to the minute, from her daughter's daily feeding and nap times to her meetings with various school districts in Oklahoma on personnel, collective bargaining and other legal matters. Her husband Lee Tampkins, a 43-year-old computer network engineer, is also self-employed and has the flexibility to help out.

Thomas is among some 2.1 million women in the U.S. who own home-based businesses, studies show. According to the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington, majority-owned female firms in Oklahoma number 87,850. About 70 percent have no paid employees.

Salary.com, a compensation software and data company, this week put the annual market value of a stay-at-home mother's work at $138,095. Some moms, who run concurrent home-based businesses, not only are saving money, but also earning it.

Joy Pierce of Edmond, earns some $30,000 annually working 12 to 15 hours a week, billing for emergency room doctors. Vanette Bell of Oklahoma City makes about $40,000 a year as a full-time home-based medical transcriptionist. And Beth Taylor of Gulfport, Miss., brings in $100,000 annually as a saleswoman for Ada-based Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc., which markets insurance for legal services.

Pierce, 45, worked 13 years as an emergency room nurse before she turned her medical knowledge to medical billing two years ago.

"I miss working with patients, but I didn't want to miss ball games and other family things,” she said.

She does most of her work when her 10-year-old son is at school and 1-year-old daughter is napping. Her income, she said, helps with family expenses, including the recent adoption of her daughter from China.

Meanwhile, Bell's earnings over the past 17 years have helped fund private school, college and wedding expenses for her three children, ages 23, 20 and 8.

"I always thought when my older kids were in high school and driving, I'd go back to working out of the house,” said Bell, a 48-year-old former banker. "But then we had our youngest and I wanted to be available to him.”

"On top of working 35 to 40 hours a week, I take him and pick him up from school, karate and other activities,” Bell said. "It's a little hard to juggle at times and lonely other times.”

She goes to the office at least once a week for camaraderie.

Taylor, a single mom to 15- and 10-year-old sons, loves the flexibility of working from home. Before she joined Pre-Paid Legal Services in 1996, she worked nights and holidays as a department store buyer and for an unsympathetic woman boss who didn't have kids, she said.

"Now, I can be there for my boys, if they're sick or they need me for a field trip,” she said.

Taylor, 46, also likes modeling hard work and persistence to her sons.

When she won Pre-Paid's top producer award in 1999, her boys, clad in tuxedos, joined her to accept it on stage at the annual convention.

"They earned it,” Taylor said.