With a Home-Based Job, the Benefits Are Hard to Beat

On a typical workday, Matt Keefe leaves his home office at lunchtime and greets his 5-year-old daughter, who is just returning from school. The two enjoy lunch together while she shares highlights of her day.

“By working at home, I spend much more time with my daughter than I would if I had to leave the house every day like my own father did,” said Keefe, 47, an Orange County commercial photographer who has worked from home for 18 years.

Keefe finds that lunching with his daughter, Alex, and spending short breaks with her throughout the day keeps their relationship strong.

“When I want a break, I go out and push her on her swing set for a few minutes,” said Keefe, who is divorced but regularly has his daughter stay with him.

“It’s really refreshing to see her excitement and enthusiasm when I share a small part of her day. I feel lucky that I’m experiencing a lot of those golden moments that won’t be around long.”

Although the practice was unusual when Keefe started working from home in the 1970s, today a growing number of people are choosing to conduct business at home. California has nearly 5 million home offices, according to Debra Schacher of the Home Office & Business Opportunities Assn. of California, which is based in Irvine. Throughout the country in 1993, about 2.1 million people started a home-based business.

“Home-based businesses are proliferating,” agreed Rudy Lewis of the National Assn. of Home Based Business in Baltimore, which provides support and development assistance to home-based businesses.

“We’ve identified 200 professions that are adapted to home office work, and by the year 2000 we project that there will be 300 to 400,” Lewis said. “Thanks to advances in telecommunications, a lot of businesses are heading home.”

Besides the obvious financial perks of operating a home business, such as low overhead, there are relationship benefits.

People who work at home often feel they have the best of both worlds, especially when there are children. While earning a living, they can monitor their children’s activities. And their schedules are often flexible enough to fit in special occasions that other working parents may find difficult, if not impossible, to attend.

“If I choose to go to a special function at my daughter’s school during the day, I don’t have to ask a boss for time off,” Keefe said. “Just recently she was awarded Student of the Month. In the morning, I took her to the school assembly and went back to work later.”

But having a home-based business isn’t without its challenges.

“One of the problems with home-based businesses is that many people, including the person’s family, don’t see it as a legitimate business,” Lewis said. “I’ve been working from home for 10 years now and answer 300 to 400 calls a day from people all over the country. My mother still doesn’t think I’m really working.”

Lewis notes that often spouses and others think the home worker can also watch children, which usually isn’t possible, especially when the kids are young.

“Even your neighbors can cause problems by dropping in to chat when you’re trying to work,” he said.

Because of the challenges of mixing family and home-based work, Lewis urges people who are thinking about setting up shop at home to do a family plan before doing a business plan.

“A home-based business can have a devastating effect on the family,” he said. “Some businesses will spread all over the home and take on a life of their own. It’s best to discuss the business with the entire family and set ground rules before starting.”

To be productive, it’s critical that your family and friends respect the fact that you are working and need to put in regular hours, Keefe said.

“I sometimes have difficulty with people thinking because I’m not taking photographs one day that I’m not working,” he said. “In reality, I’m always working. There’s much more to my business than photography.”

Keefe also finds child care essential.

“It would be very difficult to work from home without child care,” he said. “I can’t just bring my daughter home from school, feed her and then put her in front of the TV while I go back to work. That’s not healthy or even safe.”

Until recently, Sandra Davidson, 35, of Laguna Niguel, worked around the schedules of her two children, which often meant early mornings and late nights in her home office. A month ago she hired a live-in worker to help with child care and office work, and life became much easier.

“My job is very demanding and stressful,” said Davidson, who is financial officer for a small, privately held Orange County manufacturing company that she and her husband own.

“Before I had child care, I constantly felt behind on my work and worried about neglecting my kids,” she said. “Although people often expect to take care of their children when they work at home, it’s not really feasible. Parents who go to an outside office would never dream of taking their children to work every day.”

Davidson and her live-in take turns staffing the office and caring for her children, who are 7 months and 9 years old.

“When I know the children are covered, it’s much easier to get work done,” she said. “Now if I have to leave the house for a meeting, I don’t have to work around the children’s schedules.”

Despite having child-care help, working at home with children requires a lot of flexibility.

“You must be able to handle distractions well,” Davidson said. “You will get interrupted--sometimes for long periods of time.”

Davidson generally doesn’t mind the distractions, however. “I spend a lot more time with my kids than I would if I worked outside of the home,” she said. “When the weather warms up, I’ll work more nights so we can go on outings during the day. I find myself fortunate that I can do that.”

Even though Carrol Caldwell’s two children are in their early 20s, she finds that working at home sometimes stresses her relationship with them.

“In some ways I feel like I have less time for my kids than when I was working outside of the home,” said Caldwell, 48, who runs a graphic design company and publishes College Mania Magazine out of her Tustin home.

To keep afloat in her demanding field, Caldwell often finds it necessary to work long days and weekends.

“The phone often takes precedence over conversations I have with my kids,” she said. “Sometimes my daughter will be talking to me and the phone will ring. She’ll tell me to answer it, but I know the interruption bothers her.”

On the other hand, Caldwell, who is single, feels that working at home for the past six years has set a good example for her children.

“It’s been great for the kids to watch me struggle and succeed,” she said. “Having your own successful business means being assertive, independent and resourceful, which are important qualities for them to learn.”

Caldwell has also found that working at home has its drawbacks where romance is concerned. When a former boyfriend, who was in construction, lived with her, he had a hard time understanding her need to work a full day.

“He would knock off work at 2:30 or 3 and want to visit with me,” she said. “Sometimes he’d bring fruit, cheese and crackers and wine as a bribe. He couldn’t understand it was the middle of the workday for me, and he’d get impatient when I answered the phone.”

Despite the challenges, Caldwell wouldn’t have things any other way. “Although I worked in the corporate environment for years, I really love working at home.”