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For parents, working at home has some special benefits money can't buy.

The earning power of moms and dads with home-based businesses may actually diminish, but the trade off they experience raising kids is invaluable.

In a survey of entrepreneurial parents with home-based businesses, happiness, well being, behavior and social skills were cited most often as improving in their children, according to En-Parent.com, a web site devoted to the 12.6 million entrepreneurs who happen to make a living working at home while raising kids.

And that's just what they want.

For work-at-home parents, the American Dream isn't simply to own a home, but to work there so they can play a 24-7 role in raising their kids.

"Perhaps the greatest benefit of striking out on your own is the freedom to be the parent you need to be without having to ask permission for the time and space to do it in," are the collaborative words of Lisa Roberts, co-founder of En-Parent.com and work-at-home gurus Paul and Sarah Edwards, who've written more than a dozen work-at-home tomes.

Together, the trio penned the recently released "The Entrepreneurial Parent: How To Earn Your Income At Home And Still Enjoy Your Family, Your Work, And Your Life" (Tarcher-Putnam, $15.95) a guide book for those who want it all from a home-based business.

A follow-up to Roberts' "How to Raise A Family and Career Under One Roof" (Brookhaven, $15.95) -- the book that launched the Web site -- Entrepreneurial Parent (EP) defines the EP as a working parent who chooses to earn his and or her living at home, while deciding to take an active, around-the-clock role in parenting.

They are home office workers who believe that family values are crucial to their long-term business strategy and they work jobs that will grow no bigger than the walls of their home. The idea is to control their careers so they can be more flexible as a parent.

To that end, the new book is heavy in first-person anecdotes, "A Day In The Life" side bars, profiles of EP businesses and show-and-tell pages, all to help guide EPs in their calling -- everything from accounting to producing videos at home. Also, each of 101 Entrepreneurial Parent Profiles comes with a job description, required skills, necessary education and the marketing, pricing structure and the source of income you can expect.

Entrepreneurial Parents also teaches the EP how to enjoy life at work at home through time management, involving the kids and including the spouse.

It also offers the complete published version of En-Parent.com's "National Survey of Entrepreneurial Parents," a research of the attitudes of 868 EPs responding to questions with answers that served as research for the book.

The survey also describes what to expect and what it takes to be an EP.

More than a third of EPs -- 34 percent --became EPs to spend more time with kids.

While 58 percent of EPs work fewer than 40 hours a week, and 52 percent earn less than they did before they started working at home, 63 percent don't have outside child care expenses.

Enjoying the support of another working adult, 81 percent of EPs were married to spouses working outside the home with job benefits that helped support the EP.

The two toughest challenges for EPs are meeting deadlines and finding backup child care.

Published: May 30, 2002

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws -- http://www.loc.gov/copyright.

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home.
The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services.
The DeadlineNews Group includes the Web site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home.
Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News.
Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.
He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications.
In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for "Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home" (Nolo $24.99) and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.