Another Mommy Track

Sue Shellenbarger in The Wall Street Journal sees a new trend for women taking time off to have children: "The rise of the mommy 'SWAT team.'"

The acronym, for "smart women with available time," is one mother's label for all-mom teams assembled quickly through networking and staffing firms to handle crash projects. Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.

The story: Smart, accomplished professional women take time off from work to have children, but still want to keep their skills fresh. So, they band together, forming teams as necessary to tackle assignments across a range of business specialties.

Skilled workers taking temp projects isn't new, of course. What's different about these teams is that they're available on short notice because the women are usually at home; they tend to work cheap because their main motive is to keep their skills fresh; and they're often extraordinarily well-qualified, having left the work force voluntarily when their careers were on the ascent.

Here's the full article.