Bracing for Re-Entry: A Mom Goes Back To Work After 21 Years at Home

Mary Lynn Kummerer credits a bad case of the chicken pox for giving her a future in accounting. While she was home sick with the virus for a few weeks during Kindergarten, her older brother, then a high school student, spent some time teaching her basic math skills while she recovered. “I guess he figured he had a captive audience,” Mary Lynn chuckled during a phone interview. But her knack for numbers didn’t disappear when the last of her chicken pox scars faded, and she’s been able to build an amazing career as a bookkeeper even after a whopping twenty-one year absence from the work force. (Twenty-one years and seven days, Mary Lynn noted – but who’s counting?)

Mary Lynn’s story is remarkable because of this long absence and the triumph over adversity that allowed her to re-enter the workforce after so many years. We here at Professional Detours are very aware of the difficult decisions working families – particularly moms – must make, not the least of which is whether or not to stay home with the kids. Whether you’ve opted out, opted in, or are trying to decide between the two, we hope that Mary Lynn’s story gives you some insight into what “opting out” really means.

Mary Lynn got her feet wet by becoming the Treasurer of her school’s chapter of Junior Achievement, took her first clerical class as a senior in high school. Originally, she had wanted to be a teacher, but when she learned how much math was involved in accounting, she knew she’d found her calling. “I didn't know if I wanted to get married or not,” she said. “I was the worst person in the class when it came to typing, but whenever we did anything that involved math, everybody came to me for help. Discounts and percentages were especially confusing to the rest of the class.”

She did end up getting married, but not right after high school. In the meantime, she went to college and obtained a degree in Business Administration. During her senior year, she was hired by a professor who also worked at an electrical products distributor. “[He]hired somebody from one of his classes every year to help get ready for the audit, so it was only supposed to be a temp job, but when I graduated in June I didn’t have another job lined up. So they made me an accounts payable clerk.” After a while, the young and inexperienced payroll clerk stopped paying the health insurance premiums, so she and Mary Lynn switched jobs.

By then, Mary Lynn had gotten married, and in 1982, while expecting her first child, she got laid off when the company downsized. “I got unemployment for getting laid off,” she recalled, “and they sent me to a job interview. I was, like, five months pregnant, and I wore the shirt that made me look the biggest, and the guy kept looking at me, and eventually he asked, ‘Are you planning on…starting a family?” Mary Lynn laughed at the memory. “Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.”

But she wasn’t really looking to go back to work at the time anyway. Her staying home with the kids was a foregone conclusion. “We had talked about it,” Mary Lynn told me, “and we decided that if I did continue to work, any money I did make would basically go to daycare, and it just happened that I got laid off on St. Patrick’s day of 1982 and then [my daughter] was born in August.”

Mary Lynn had two daughters and, as they grew, she got involved in their school activities. They were heavily involved in the Girl Scouts, and Mary Lynn was one of three troop leaders and was the recruiter for the elementary school and, later, the junior high and high schools her daughters attended. “I was in charge of all the bookkeeping, at least for our troop. Things didn’t really change, we didn’t have much money so we were always looking for something cheap to do,” she laughed.

Her girls grew up and went to college, and Mary Lynn was happily beginning to look forward to her retirement years, when suddenly, her husband of more than 23 dropped a bombshell: he was moving out and wanted a divorce. Devastated and terrified, Mary Lynn had no choice. “I hadn’t worked for twenty-one years and seven days…I was applying for different jobs and sending my resume out, and I wasn’t getting anything back.” So she took a job at a big-box discount retail store while she continued applying for every bookkeeping and accounting job she could find.

“I also called the University and they had this women’s program that would help homemakers get jobs, but I found out I didn’t qualify because I lived [just across the state line]. But they did put me in touch with a program called WIA, that helped people who were displaced or had lost their jobs and needed retraining.” The WIA is actually a federal program, and it stands for the Workforce Investment Act (click here for a map with links to the WIA programs in each state). Through this program, she was able to take some skills tests and enroll in a placement program. Mary Lynn did well on the math section of the test “until I got to the question where it asked you to divide fractions, and I totally…wow. I took the rest of the test, and I went back and I actually figured it out. It went as high as the 12^th grade level, and they didn’t even finish grading it because I’d already reached the maximum score. When I got the results, I called my mom and I said, ‘I’ve got a brain, and it still works!’”

Mary Lynn also took some classes at the community college to update her skills. She learned Quickbooks and Peachtree, but “What they teach you in those classes can’t prepare you because there is so much more. They just give you a brief overview, but then you can customize it as much as you want.” The technology was the most difficult part of seeking a new job after spending so long as a stay at home mom. “When I was in college, our computer classes, you had to use punch cards. Going to MS Word and Excel, it was so demanding.” But now that she’s mastered it, she uses it for everything. “When things happen, I got right to the computer and make my spreadsheets about what I need to do,” she said, recounting how she used Excel to keep track of her mother and stepfather’s estate after they passed away in 2009.

Mary Lynn got her lucky break when her current boss, the owner of a small engineering and IT support firm, took a chance. “He took a big chance,” Mary Lynn admits, by hiring someone who had been out of the workforce for many years and whose technological skills were still developing. “He liked the fact that I had an accounting degree.” And he was willing to put in a little time for on-the-job training for an employee he felt would be loyal and committed. “If I needed help, [my boss] would say, ‘Ok, do this, do that.’ He would show me how to do it.” And the risk seems to have paid off for them both – she’s been the office manager at her current company for over four years now.

Getting a job in a field she enjoys has been crucial to Mary Lynn’s confidence as well as her financial independence. A little while after getting her current job, “one of our customers was having a problem with Quickbooks,” she recalled. “My boss said, ‘Talk to Mary Lynn, she knows everything about Quickbooks!’ It made me feel good that I could conquer that and that I could succeed at it.’”

Mary Lynn advises anyone re-entering the workforce after a long hiatus to look into any free programs offered by your state or local governments. She also checked into the low-fee courses at her local community college. And above all, don’t give up. “If I can do it,” she said, “anyone can do it!”