Spotted on: Maxim and True Office Confessions
Like a chic purse or pair of sexy heels, if you don’t yet have an Office Husband you’re missing out on one of the summer’s hottest accessories. OH’s are all the rage on True Office Confessions, and even made this month’s cover of Details magazine. But should the guy who gets you through those long work days be the guy who gets you through the lonely nights?

As the Maxim story points out, women’s ascendance in the workplace and longer hours have changed relationship dynamics at home and at the office. But it’s likely that most women are just looking for companionship and not actually wanting to consummate the connections. (Watch out for those Maxim men on the prowl in their irresistible power suits!) As one woman was quoted, “We work well together because we’re so close, and flirting makes work fun. It’s perfect as is—I don’t want the drama a real affair brings.”

Cubicle soul mates with real life spouses may also not appreciate the office bonding, especially wives. Since 75% of family obligations still fall on women’s shoulders even though they work the same number of hours as men, it’s likely that they’d be the ones getting the bum end of the deal while their husbands loiter at work “restocking the supply closet.”

Powerful women may now be the ones having their cast-off cabana boys transferred to the mail room after ill-advised trysts, but such dalliances are still a major professional and personal risk.

Spotted on: Yahoo! Shine
Aliza Sherman isn’t fond of the term “mompreneur,” as she notes in her recent Shine blog post, but the growing popularity of the work-from-home model for busy power mothers may mean that the highly sought after C-suite is moving to the living room.

After all, what is a talented mom who is toggling between home and work to do with her well-educated female brain if her focus and decision-making ability is stretched too thin? As I wrote in the June issue of the Harvard Business Review:

“Many women are sidelined, ultimately, by a timing issue. There’s a certain age, long established by large organizations, at which professionals must decide to make their play for the big promotion—the one that will put them in line for the C-suite—and while it’s a good time for men on average, it’s not a good time for women. That go-for-it moment typically comes in one’s forties, when managers have gained the knowledge and perspective needed to take on real stewardship of a business. But at that phase of life, women with children already have a lot on their plates. Not only are they usually expected to handle the lion’s share of responsibility on the home front (even when both members of a couple hold full-time jobs), but their own brain chemistry makes it hard for them to do otherwise. For reasons important to the survival of the species, women in childbearing years undergo changes that intensify their focus on the viability of offspring. It’s a passing phenomenon, but ill-timed for those with career ambitions …
If the same call came a few years later, many women would seize the opportunity. The very woman who could not find the capacity to green-light her own promotion in her forties can be, in her fifties, ready to take on the world.”

Companies certainly should re-evaluate their advancement structures, but women should also recognize that there are many non-traditional options available to them, particularly in web-based businesses. There’s nothing cutesy about being a “mompreneur” when you’re raking in the big bucks and balancing your work and life on your own terms.