[彭蒙惠英语] “妈妈企业家”设法兼顾工作和家庭
"Mompreneurs" Juggle Work and Family (1/2)
More and more moms are running their own companies while raising their children---all from home
Amie Trovada-Pavone laughs at the puzzled look on her neighbors' faces when they stop by her home and she tells them she doesn't have time to go out for lunch.
"They don't realize I work at home," she says. As the 35-year-old owner of PromoWorx, a successful promotional marketing firm and apparel manufacturer, her day starts at 7a.m. when she prepares breakfast for her three kids while making business calls to China.
The juggling continues all day---she sketches designs while the kids eat in the kitchen: she uses the computer while the kids play on the Xbox;and she confers via her PDA during her daughter's gymnastics class. Trovada-Pavone doesn't mind all the multitasking because she gets to spend time with her children.
"Mom-managed" businesses
She is part of a growing trend of "mompreneurs," or women who stay at home running a company while raising their children. Fueled in part by the Internet, a more experienced female work force and child-care issues, mom-managed businesses seem to have exploded in the last five years.
A mom running a business is a natural fit, says Ellen Parlapiano, the New York-based co-author of Mompreneurs: A Mother's Step-by-Step Guide to Work-at-Home Success. "If you think about it, running a business is a lot like running a family," says Parlapiano, who fields as many as 40,000 requests a month from women looking for tips. "You have to be organized and patient and disciplined and juggle a lot of [tasks] at once. Mothers do this every day."
Some women had successful careers before having children, so it's no wonder that more of them are setting up shop at home. "Women today have the skills, the education and the experience in the workplace," Parlapiano says.
Vocabulary Focus
Juggle (v) to succeed in arranging your life so that you have time to involve yourself in two or more different activities
Confer (v) to exchange ideas on a particular subject, often in order to reach a decision on what action to take
Fuel (v) to increase or strengthen a feeling, type of behavior or something else
Explode (v) to increase very quickly
Field (v) to answer questions, or respond to something such as requests, especially in a formal situation
Set up shop (idiom) to establish a business
Specialized Terms
apparel (n)--- 服装；成衣 clothing of a particular type, especially as it is displayed for sale in a shop
Xbox (n)--- Xbox 电视游戏机 a video game console crated by Microsoft and released in 2001 in North America
PDA (n)--- 个人数字助理，掌上电脑 abbreviation for personal digital assistant, a small computer that you can carry with you
