What type of home-based biz are you thinking of? Would be a unique service/product that others in your region do not offer?

It would take alot of work to get it up and running, plus ongoing networking with potential customers and other like-oriented businesses whom you can partner with. Bur could be worth it financially and for your own development in terms of work-related skill sets.

It could bring you closer to your daughters, but no guarantee when they are in their teens and up.

I do have a certain opinion because:

In my last job, I hired a woman around my age (at time of hire, 48), who was a full-time mom for over 10 yrs. Then she was suddenly divorced and without recent paid work experience, to support her 2 teenage sons. So through a special program funded by govn't (not everyone unemployed person is eligible), she attended college and got her diploma. It took 2 yrs. I knew it was very demanding on her..and I could see when training her, her computer literacy skills were not good. Not as good as someone else who would have had worked on computers daily. I know she lives at near poverty level. The training period was painfully slow..

Life is full of rude/terrible surprises. I also have a cousin my age, who married (I actually went to her wedding.) and later divorced with 4 children. The youngest was around 3-4 yrs. old when the divorce occurred.

Thankfully she had a job already with postal office prior to divorce...and so she carried on. While her 70-yr. old+ Mom looked after all the children. Seriously this is demand on her mom also. But what could she do? Daycare costs money. She is still single. Her ex-hubby is in a working-class job so child custody payments wouldn't be generous.

If you have good working skills from the past, don't abandon them completely, or at least self-teach yourself your computer skills with current common software and keep such skills current.

I ...cannot...begin ..to emphasize how important this is in terms of survival skills.

I just heard from physician sister: She has her 3 yrs. daughter part-time in daycare because she just finds it easier to cope with her newborn baby. As for her hubby, he works full-time as a cook but she will return to work at the hospital. Just on his salary, it will not pay the bills completely. His salary is poverty-level.

And they live an ordinary lifestyle. ie. 1 car, home near subway.


She has elected to work part-time as a physician (I think it's 15-20 hrs. per wk.) but with her salary they can afford some daycare. Unlike my other married sisters with children (1 works, 2nd one has been full-time homemaker for many years as mentioned in thread earlier), I do see this as a more complicated situation, partially because of her hubby which I won't get into. I just hope this works for them all.


I'm not disagreeing about living at poverty-level. But I wouldn't romanticize it either after being raised by parents where my mother never worked outside home with 6 children and my father was a restaurant cook his whole life. Are we closer to my mother because she was around?....No. It's more her personality, communication style...and frankly we've lost our mother,first language because of English-language assimilation. I see glimmers in my mother, the woman she could have become, had life's opportunities been so different. She has natural mathematical abilities that my father doesn't have much. (She has gr. 10 level education, my father has gr. 12 education) and a technical ability. Those natural tendencies have been passed to and honed in..some of her children, who did their applied sciences university degrees, majored in the scientific areas. Whereas the more artistic stuff I got from my father. It IS true sometimes a parent's natural gifts is never realized...but comes true in the next generation(s) thereafter. It's almost heartbreaking to see...unfulfilled potential.

I think the closeness of parent to child(ren) is the personality of parent and how they cultivate long-term communication within the parent-child relationship. And vigilance/awareness of child's relationships with other people outside of the family as they grow-up. Not whether or not, they are working full-time outside of the home. For instance, most of us feel easier/closer to our father because he can speak English and he also is an even-tempered person more than mother. Yet, he worked full-time his whole life. But he also was not subjected to being at home with 6 children 24/7 for 20 yrs. straight. That can affect the mental health of some people.

There's alot of different ways how to approach work-life balance.