回复：A big concern: Consultant = 75% travel - to internuts and ot

It's absolutely true that travelling all the time is real bothersome, particularly for those female consultants with young children. How to handle this and what strategies you can take, I would suggest the followings:

First, make sure you are clear what the purpose of being a consultant is for you. There are two possibilities:

(1) Enjoying doing consulting, plan to continue to stay with the consulting firm and to get career advanced;
(2) Staying in consulting business is to sharpen your skillsets, lay a solid foundation for your life long career.

I understand your goal is (2). Then the following strategies apply:

(1) If you are working in one of Big5 or SAP America, the purpose of being a consultant is already complished. After working on the job for one year or longer, basically you can shoose any companies you want.  Industries like those people dearly.

(2) Provided that currently you are working in a non-name consulting firm, you should consider to accumulate your knowledge and prepare to move one tier up - move up to Big5, then repeat (1).

(3) In case you are working as an employee in a company, you think you need to grow your skills, try to go to (1) directly or go to (2) then go to (1).

(4) If you are not employed, you'll need to do any one of the above (1) to (3).

Why am I so emphasizing the importance of Big5?  Think about this - if you have an ambition to be standing out or you choose to do independant consulting in the future, you are competing with a group of people with all kinds of background. When economy is good, market is strong with a lot of opportunties, no problem, everyone gets the slice of the pie;  when economy goes under, demand is low or scarce, who will get the jobs? You heard "Early birds get the worms", right? Modify it into "High profilers get the jobs".  Who are those high profilers?  Those with Big5's background!  Fair enough?

It is the same if you want to have a leisure and relaxed job in a company. With Big5 background, you can either stay and get career admancement, or you can jump with ease at any time when you feel unhappy, you rein!

Now if you think this way, with a proper arrangement with your children and maybe one year suffering, you may get a rosy return for next 30-40 years.

Make sense at all?