Blurring Boundaries

For many working moms, cell phones and e-mail are now considered the minimum must-haves. The downsizing, streamlining, and productivity improvements that have become the hallmarks of the American way of doing business over the past decade all signify but one thing: We have to do more work in the same amount of time, which means we do it on nights and weekends. The work treadmill seems to keep speeding up as we go faster. And it's ironic that technology, which is supposed to make things easier, actually makes it harder and harder to turn off the endless demands.

Don't even get Amy Freedman started on what so-called advancements in communication have done to her life: "It's supposed to save you oodles of time, right? Well, it's five-thirty p.m., and I'm finally reading the sixty-nine e-mails I have from today alone. I returned a ton of calls during my lunch hour and from my cell phone in the carpool line, and I'll be back on the phone tonight after dinner. Once my kids go to sleep, it's more e-mail," says Freedman, a mom of two girls, ages 10 and 7, and the owner of a Gymboree Play & Music Center in Oklahoma City.

Lylla Carter, a mom of three, ages 11, 6, and 1, in Southampton, New York, finds that technology makes her part-time work running a local chorus a 7 a.m.-to-10 p.m. responsibility. For the most part, she doesn't mind squeezing in the all-hours phone calls and e-mail, but her husband, Noah, does mind when it interrupts family time. This is a true conflict, she says, admitting that it's hard to draw the line on when to stop working. "My work with the chorus is a real passion. I love being able to pursue an outlet beyond mom and wife, and technology -- for better or worse -- is the only thing that makes it possible."

For Ellen Rappaport Tanowitz, the pull of technology begins as soon as she steps out of her morning shower. This Boston mom of two, ages 4 and 1, started a private law practice out of her home so she could have flexible hours. "But the first thing I want to do every day is check my e-mail," she says. "My husband, who takes the boys to daycare on his way to work, finally said, 'You have to stop that! I need your help in the morning.' If I don't turn off the business line that rings in my home, I feel a compulsion to answer it, even after hours. It's just hard for me to turn off work, literally and figuratively." Which of course was one of the reasons she decided to build a home-based career to begin with.