Families: Mothers of Invention

Something was wrong with Amilya Antonetti's son David. She knew it shortly after arriving home from the hospital six years ago. "He never turned that pinkish color babies turn," she says. "He looked gray, and he would cry until he passed out." At first doctors thought David was colicky and that his crying spells would end. They didn't, and his doctors diagnosed asthma and severe allergies, but they still couldn't explain what was sending David to the emergency room. "We were in and out of the hospital, and we were losing him," says his 32-year-old mother from San Leandro, Calif. Then, around David's first birthday, she discovered the trigger for her son's attacks: household cleaners, items she kept in her own kitchen cabinets. "Every time I cleaned the house, he'd have a major attack a couple of hours later. I didn't realize it until I started to keep a journal," she says. She made the connection while flipping through a couple of months of entries. But even then, Antonetti says she struggled to understand how such a normal routine could affect her son. She asked other moms if their kids reacted to any cleaning products. She also began doing research, and ultimately she went to homeopathic and medical doctors who confirmed that David could be allergic to these everyday items.

And that's how SoapWorks, a $2 million company that produces nontoxic, soap-based cleaning products, was born. Today, four years after starting the company in her garage, Antonetti employs 52 people, most of whom are themselves moms of children with severe allergies or other ailments.

Necessity may be the mother of invention. But now more than ever, it seems that motherhood is a springboard. In fact, so many mothers are taking the entrepreneurial plunge that they have earned their own label: mompreneurs. "Moms are noticing needs in the marketplace that their parenthood gives them the vision to see," says Ellen Parlapiano, co-author of Mompreneurs: A Mother's Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Work-at-Home Success. "They're filling those niches instead of waiting for someone else to do it."

Mompreneurs are often professionals who decided to stay at home to spend more time with their children. Those who are successful do what Antonetti did. They research whether a similar product or service exists; then they shop the idea around to other moms and stores to see if it's something others would purchase.

That's what Julie Aigner-Clark of Littleton, Colo., did after she developed Baby Einstein, her first educational video for infants. A former schoolteacher, Aigner-Clark, 33, was still pregnant with her first daughter, Aspen, when she came across research showing that children learn foreign languages more easily when they are exposed to a variety of language sounds during infancy.