If you think your job is one crisis after another, look at Sharon Houy’s.

“There was a time after 9/11 when I’d open the paper every Sunday and nearly have a heart attack,” recalls Sharon, chief of staff for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which gathers strategic information for the military. “An article in, say, the Washington Post would mention nuclear weapons being moved. I’d be calling our analysts, telling that poor mom of young kids who follows Pakistani policy to come in on a Sunday.”

In her nearly 30-year career in intelligence, Sharon, 55, mom of Cassandra, 16, has had to take off overseas without telling her husband why. And questions “from above” often kept her working late. but when you’re doing legwork for the secretary of defense or the White House, you don’t grumble so much.

Remember Valerie Plame Wilson? Until the George W. Bush administration leaked her identity, Valerie, now 49, was a CIA case officer—what Hollywood portrays as a spy, though she says that’s a misnomer. Her job was to recruit and manage foreigners who spy. While married to an ambassador and raising young twins, she worked “cover jobs” amid covert assignments overseas. (She can’t give details on her multiple aliases, but common CIA covers include diplomats, journalists and photographers.) Her real work was meeting with “assets,” a.k.a. foreign spies, and trying to recruit new ones. “Basically, the taxpayers get their money’s worth out of you,” Valerie jokes.

Beyond the job basics, working in intelligence has singular demands: ardent patriotism, a mouth like a brawny paper towel (no leaks) and child care for all contingencies. We mean it: late nights, long weekends, even 179-day overseas deployments. Did we mention you also have to lie to your kids?

Hollywood vs. Reality
There’s no field with a more sizzling yet outlandish image. Think stiletto heels, high-speed chases, elaborate assignation plots involving spider venom dripped into a martini glass.

Reality? Not quite. Although Mr. & Mrs. Smith gets it right in one aspect: There are a lot of married couples in intelligence. It helps to be with someone who knows the hours and has the same security clearance.

Instead of physical derring-do, intelligence is “about using your brain to put together the pieces of a puzzle,” says Ellen McCarthy, 50, who started her career tracking Soviet submarines for the navy and is now president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, a networking organization. “If you can track a Soviet sub, you can track anything,” she jokes. (Memo to kids Liam, 11, and Eileen, 9: Don’t expect to get away with much when you’re teens.) Valerie was trained to handle weapons, drive defensively and detect and avoid surveillance. Yet what the job required on a daily basis was people skills—a blend of charisma, persistence, insight and tact. She sized up people, managed delicate relationships and met with informants in hotels, restaurants, clubs and parks. She compiled her findings for CIA headquarters.

Though she can’t share specifics— published reports suggest nuclear counter-proliferation assignments in Athens and Belgium—Valerie says the contours of her life weren’t so different from many working moms’. She juggled multiple tasks, fought back feelings of guilt and constantly wished for just “10 uninterrupted minutes” to tie up something. Don’t think of a gun stuffed in her garter, she says, more like crayons stuffed in her purse: “I remember going to a park, trying to keep one eye on the kids, reading stuff related to work.”

Lips Are Sealed
How does it feel to have a “separate life?” DIA case officer Jill,* who has two children under age 4, says keeping your job quiet isn’t as difficult as people imagine. “Most people have work personas and home personas and manage keeping them apart quite well. Being a case officer is not much different in my mind.”

Yet it can be hard “to come home with something you’ve found out or are worried about and not be able to share it,” says Ellen, which is why it’s critical to have a supportive partner. There are many things she’ll never be able to tell her husband. But not “bringing the job home” forces you to cultivate other topics, says Sharon. She and husband Charlie Houy, a staff director for the Senate Appropriations Committee, talk about their daughter and their love of wines at home. “You’re not keeping a secret on a whim,” adds Valerie. “You’re doing it to protect others.”

When she was outed as a CIA operative, Valerie’s children, Trevor and Samantha, were 3, so she hadn’t yet faced questions about what mommy did. She says the CIA left it up to their officers which family members knew their CIA affiliation. Her husband and her parents, who lived near her and provided backup child care, knew. Now 12, the Wilson twins love poking at mom about her past, trying to tease out secrets. Hey, better to be a fascinating mom than a dull one.

In fact, what’s often harder than staying low profile is accepting that the field doesn’t get much public praise, Ellen suggests. “There’s no positive press. You can’t talk about intelligence successes. The only thing the public hears about is failures.” But every woman we spoke to feels intense pride in serving her country. “I loved my job, loved my field,” says Valerie, whose memoir, Fair Game, became a movie. “If I wasn’t thrown into the public sphere because of political shenanigans, I’d be overseas right now doing my job.”

A (Wo)Man’s World?
Although Valerie is the world’s best-known “spy” mom, she’s far from the only one. “Oh yes, there are mothers who work covertly overseas,” says Ellen, who recently arranged for a female case officer—who became widowed and raised her children while under cover—to share her story at an internal forum. “Her kids just thought mom was working.” So there are moms, but not many. The field, 16 intelligence agencies, is male dominated. Sharon estimates the DIA is 75 percent men. As part of the hiring process, expect an intensive background check and to sign a statement saying you can be deployed overseas in service to the government.

As for being family-friendly...well, it’s getting better. The DIA has introduced part-time and job-sharing programs to provide more flexibility. If your spouse gets transferred overseas on government work, the DIA will try to find a position in that country for you, too, says Sharon.

Because her husband is stationed overseas in the army and their children are very young, Jill says, she has the flexibility to choose assignments that keep her at home. She also relies on a full-time caregiver whom she trusts unconditionally, though “it can get expensive sometimes,” she says. The posted salary range for a CIA operations officer is $58,000 to $81,000 per year. An analyst, who travels less and has more predictable hours, makes roughly the same.

The hours may be long, but the days are never dull, and you’ll be working with “the cream of the crop,” says Ellen. “These are smart, highly motivated people. They are patriots.”

Lessons from the Front
Don’t have secrets. At least up front. Be prepared for your financial, social and medical history to be checked. “You’ll be an open book to the government,” says former agent Ellen McCarthy.

Know a foreign language. This is a plus in intelligence (and in many career sectors). Case officer Jill* speaks two.

Get your papers in order. Have your life insurance and will up to date. A good idea for any mom, anytime.

Embrace the unknown. “If you’re the type of person who’s unwilling to take a risk and must know everything before you make a commitment,” says Jill, “this is probably not the right job for you.”

*name changed for privacy.

IllustratIon by Nathalie Dion/Agoodson.com