Though historical stigmas tied to working from home are gradually being dispelled, there are still some employers who envision moms working from home as constantly distracted by dirty diapers, taking kids to soccer practice, or chatting with the neighbor. However, a recent survey conducted by FlexJobs found that the number one reason for wanting to work from home is actually to achieve less distraction – from colleagues! Considering 70% of the respondents are also parents and 67% of those still have kids who live at home, it’s surprising that they see their co-workers as having more of a negative impact on work productivity than their children.

In fact, if you think about it, moms who work 20 hours or more from home generally (and wisely) have child care, so with the exception of a coffee break check in, there are much less distractions. On the flip side, when working from company headquarters, colleagues generally don’t have someone who is paid to keep them from knocking on your door or walking up to your cube to see what you thought about Caroline’s verbal smack down of Teresa on Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Following the 82% who chose fewer interruptions from colleagues as their reason to want to work from home, other top reasons were commuting stress  (77%), minimized office politics (73%), a more comfortable office environment (72%), and fewer overall distractions (71%). If you’re a data junkie, here are some more interesting results from the FlexJobs’ survey.

• Commuting can suck, but really we want work-life balance. The number one reason that people want a job with flexibility, such as working from home, turned out to be the general goal of work-life balance (79%) rather than the more targeted reason of family (59%). Other compelling contributors are commute stress (45%), time savings (41%), cost savings (40%), health (26%), environment (24%) and exercise (24%).
  
  
• It’s not that hard to make us more productive, happy, and healthy employees. Allowing a telecommuting option would do wonders in the overall mental – and physical – well-being of employees, since 93% feel having a telecommuting job would save them money, 96% said it would save them time, 78% feel they would be more healthy and 86% would feel less stressed.
  
  
• We’re smart and experienced. As for education, 80% of FlexJobs’ respondents – who are explicitly interested jobs with some kind of work flexibility – have a bachelors degree or higher and 80% were between ages 30-59. With the age bracket indicating prior work experience, it’s all the more notable that 98% felt telecommuting would improve or maintain their productivity compared with being in an office.

Considering the survey results, working from home might not be the enemy to distraction and productivity that it’s often cracked up to be. No offense, water cooler.