Easterling says it worked out so well with TSPE that such an arrangement became part of her “employment criteria.” She says, “I would state it right up front in the interview, and if it wasn't OK, I would say thanks and bye.” Two years ago, she took it a step further and started her own business in Austin as an independent consultant specializing in management to small associations. “It was an economic risk, but because the children were older by then [18 and 15 years old], I felt comfortable taking that risk. I wish I'd had the courage to do it earlier, but it never occurred to us in the late '80s and early '90s — we put our children in day care and I went to work. That's just what people did.”

Drawing Boundaries

Whether working from home or commuting to the office, a key to balance is knowing that sometimes something just has to give. For many planners, the first thing to go is the ideal of a perfectly maintained home. “I learned when my kids were little that my aim at home was to be comfortable, but House Beautiful was going to have to knock on someone else's door,” says one planner. Wilkin notes that one of the ways she stays sane is to let her house be less than perfect: “I don't vacuum twice a week, I don't cook gourmet meals, we get takeout more often than I'd like, and the boys don't always get to bed exactly when they should. But that's all OK — it's all part of the trade-offs.”

Sometimes it can be harder to do that in the office, though — the work has to get done. “A to-do list is like the laundry,” says Christine Galvin. “Even when you think it's all done, you're still wearing clothes, and so there's still more to do.” And she notes that “e-mail is a blessing and a curse. It can keep you connected 24 hours a day if you let it.”

In her role as director of the Ottawa County, Ohio, United Way, Galvin has found a way to set boundaries both for herself and those with whom she works. “We have a lot of meetings with the volunteers and I have an agreement with them that those meetings will be during the workday; I think that night meetings infringe on family life. My volunteers work for corporations, and while it's OK to have events at night, meetings need to happen during the day so that people aren't pulled away from their families. We're an organization that is supposed to be dedicated to putting families first, so that's really important to us.”

Those who work at home may have more flexibility, but the boundaries can be hard to enforce. “I have to put in approximately eight hours a day, and it's sometimes hard because I have two people at home who want me to go places with them and do things with them,” says Denise McGinn, CAE, president, Association Guidance, an association management company based in East Lansing, Mich., referring to her 8-year-old daughter, who was home during the summer, and her husband, who retired at the beginning of July. “I need to stay committed to shutting the door so I can do what I need to.” McGinn has found that especially difficult as she and her husband adjust to his recent retirement. “He'll burst into the office, all excited about something, or want to spend more time on the golf course with me,” she says.

On the flip side, sometimes she finds it's hard to stop working with her office at home. “It's easy to find myself working from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. after my daughter is in bed,” she says. Still, she says it's easier now than when she was raising her two sons, who are now 21 and 24. “In those days, I worked full-time-plus in an office,” she says, “and I was lucky that most of my bosses back then understood that if you have children, there were sometimes things you had to do. I could leave for two hours if I needed to, but I still needed to make up the time, so I'd end up working in the evenings or on the weekends. And it was a lot harder then since we didn't have computers.”

And if you can't pull the time from your work life and you can't take it from your children, just where does it come from? According to Wilkin, there's little place left to squeeze that time from right now. “I used to take voice lessons and was part of a competitive chorus. But after I had kids, the priorities changed. There just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything. Right now, I need to focus on my family and my work — there will be plenty of time to sing later in my life.”

Similarly, for Chris Canning, CMP, a San Diego — based meetings consultant, the “biggest thing that suffered was my social life. I put my kids first and then my career. I was always trying to advance personally and professionally, but socially … well, that always had to come last.”

The Right Support

At some point, every working mother needs the help of others along the way, be it a husband or partner, parents, neighbors, paid help, or even the kids themselves. “When I first started working at home, my parents would come help,” says Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, chief strategist for Bonnie Wallsh Associates LLC, a meeting management consulting and training firm in Charlotte, N.C. “Sometimes [they'd] bring friends to do things like stuff envelopes. My husband and kids would do what they could — my daughter was weaned on customer support. It was actually a wonderful way for the family to be together.” Most of all, though, Wallsh says her support came from her husband: “He supported me, encouraged me, figured out how long I could work without bringing in money — he was a true partner.”

A single mother, Canning also put her kids to work. “When they were little, they'd go to events with me and they thought it was fun. Eventually they wanted to be paid. I was working for a woman who had kids too, so we came up with the idea that the kids could pick up trash for money.”

And McGinn thinks her daughter is getting invaluable experience by being exposed to the industry. “She helps put out thank-you gifts or pack up the office or put up signs,” she says. “But she also gets to meet CEOs and talk with entertainers and watch sound checks — it's all a great experience for her, whether she goes into this industry or not.” And now that her husband is retired, she has another set of hands to help out. “He's free labor if I need it — he's been doing a lot of phone calls for me and some financial work and can help with running errands, and putting up signs.” Even before his retirement, he went in early and was out by 2:30, says McGinn, “so I could schedule meetings for between 2:30 and 5, knowing that he'd be here and I didn't need to find someone to take care of my daughter. Everything's based around putting her first but not losing sight of the clients that need to be served.”

Bringing Home the Bacon

Despite a recent Forbes online article that being married to a “career girl” can result in everything from a dirty house to poor health for the husband to infidelity, more than one-third of married American women are not only working but are bringing home more money than their husbands. Another study this summer claimed that women, even those “with feminist views,” want their husbands to make more than they do. But are these assertions true?

“At the height of my career, I was making more money than my husband,” says 61-year-old Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, chief strategist, Bonnie Wallsh Associates LLC, Charlotte, N.C. “He had no problem with it — he didn't have that kind of ego — and I had no problem with it. Never once in our 36 years of marriage did we argue about money, though we did, of course, argue about other things!”

Joan Eisenstodt, chief strategist, Eisenstodt Associates LLC, Washington, D.C., has also been the major breadwinner throughout her almost 10-year marriage, a role that became more important when her husband was out of work for 13 months. “I never used to talk about it,” she admits, “but in the past year, the more I discuss it with other women, the more I hear from other women who are the key breadwinners.” She says that being the primary breadwinner had not been a source of tension: “I like working and I've always made more, while it's never been the main focus of his life, and we've both always been happy to have the advantages that my money brings.” But she does note that there was a little more tension when she was the only one bringing in money. “It doesn't bother me, but I didn't expect it,” the 59-year-old Eisenstodt says. “For those of us who are boomers, we grew up with a culture that had an expectation that men would make more than women.”

Denise McGinn, CAE, president, Association Guidance, East Lansing, Mich., and her husband are still adjusting to a recent shift in their financial roles after her husband's retirement this summer. “He has a pension and he received a buyout, so it wasn't a huge change immediately,” she says, “but he's now making less than he used to and for the first time I'm bringing in more money than him. It's been a little hard for him to adjust to, but he's getting used to it.”

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