When Martha Flory needs to run a quick errand or go to the grocery store, she cashes in some half-hour tokens and drops her 6-month-old daughter off at a friend's house. Flory is part of a co-op babysitting group with five church friends in Arlington, Va. Each mom gets 30 tokens to start. They earn back tokens by babysitting the others' kids. The co-op helps her balance work and family life.

Career moms work the equivalent of a six-day workweek. And they don't get overtime or weekends off. "Salaried women spend about 46 hours on the job and 25 hours a week on household responsibilities," says Monica Roper, a work life consultant for WFD Consulting in Boston, Mass.

Balancing a career and a family can be a never-ending process. Childcare, flexible work hours and work-family benefits help, but most moms depend on some creative mechanism for organizing and planning their families' time that works for them. Flory's tokens, like her pact with her husband to not watch TV shows, allow her to allot time with her daughter, her husband, her girlfriends, her book club and her church friends each month – and help her strike a balance.

Flory also job-shares a senior performance consultant position with US Airways. She works two days a week and her job-share partner works three days. This way she can spend the rest of the week with her daughter, Isabella. "It's a perfect balance," she says. "With little ones, it's nice to not be a full-time mom. [Work] is really a 'break' – thinking differently, having adult interaction."

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