 A Recipe of Help for Working Moms—By Charleen Earley Published: May, 2007  Amy Keroes, mother of Matthew and Jessica, co-founded Mommytrackd.com, an entertaining resource for working moms. Sure, working moms can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, but do they actually have time to sit down and eat it? They do now, with the ever-growing online communities designed to help moms organize, strategize, and revitalize. You know the drill: up by 5am, feed baby, dress kids, dress yourself, where's that other shoe, school drop-offs, 9am board meeting, a snack for lunch, back to school at 3pm (count them to see if they're all there), back at the office, home by 6pm, then dinner. Forgot to defrost the chicken. Amy Keroes of Mill Valley has been there, done that, and got the t-shirt with baby food stains on it. Mother of Matthew, 6, and Jessica, 4, she was a fifth year associate at the law firm Latham & Watkins, and later became a senior corporate counsel for Gap Inc. for six years. Late 2005, she says the media was inundated with stories about moms trading high heels for slippers to stay home full time, but found nothing about moms like her, who decided to continue working, either by choice or out of necessity. "I decided to create a website with a mission to provide time-crunched, over-extended, multi-tasked-out moms an informative and entertaining resource to help alleviate some of the stress associated with working outside the home while raising a family," she says. Keroes created the site http://www.mommytrackd.com — appropriately launching it on Mother's Day, 2006 — giving working moms a leg-up by providing them with hot topics, a survival guide, a reading room, message boards, and more. It's what working mom Terra Malcom, 33, of San Francisco calls heaven-sent. "Mainly, it has helped me feel normal," says Malcom, who works four days a week for Yahoo! and owns her own company, http://www.flyingpeas.com. "I mean it. In times when I feel like I'm crazy for having so many balls in the air, I check out Mommy Track'd. I usually walk away with tips on managing the chaotic — but wonderful — life of being a working mom. Or, at the very least, I am reminded that I'm not alone in my quest to find the balance of career and family." Andra Davidson, co-founder of http://www.mothersclick.com, can't remember her mother in Chicago having a support group. Raised in Santa Clara, and the mother of two daughters of her own, she says mothers groups are a growing phenomenon. "There are millions of groups growing around the world," says Davidson, 38. "And with the Internet, it's making it easier for moms to connect and make communities." When Davidson became a new mom, she searched the Internet for resources, and while she found countless sites, she also found them disconnected and hard to navigate. "I found the online research to be a scattered marketplace with inefficient communication," she says. "I wanted to create new standards. We provide tools and services so that moms can better manage their activities and communications online." Mother's Click currently has more than 10,000 users and 600 mother's groups, while Mommy Track'd has more than 60,000 site viewers each month. | ||
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