Tag: childcare

The rise and rise of the #Mumpreneur

A brief and good-natured Twitter spat between me and Marketing Donut about their “Mumpreneurs Week” made me think again about women and business. And I’m still baffled.

I am a mother.  I have a business.  Without me even having noticed, this  makes me a mumpreneur,  eligible to attend special conferences and receive my own awards.  I have no idea why.

I won’t repeat the  questions I raised in the “Is business really harder for women?” post except to say that on none of the mumpreneur supporter sites I’ve speed-read this morning have I found any advice that applies exclusively to self-employed mothers or answers a problem that’s only faced by mothers.  The advice – and it’s generally very good advice – is about time and resource management, about planning and budgeting, about choosing between working at home or finding premises, about marketing.  All of that stuff is relevant to start-up businesses whoever they’re run by.

The one issue that’s raised consistently on these sites that doesn’t featured much on the CBI‘s is, of course, childcare.  There’s an awful lot of “how heroic it is to juggle children and your own businesses” when actually the focus should be – “how heroic  working parents are to juggle childcare and working life in the absence of available, affordable childcare“.

A lot of us mumpreneurs (I’m trying to get  used to using the word – there may be a grant in it eventually) have opted out of regular working life and into self-employment precisely because it offers an easier way of managing the work/ life thing.

Personally when I was in full-time work I got tired of being tired: of running everywhere and always being late anyway; of worrying that I wasn’t  a good enough employee nor a good enough mother;  of having to negotiate flexible working hours but still not being able to attend school plays; of worrying about work when I was at home and about children when I was at work.  And I say this despite the fact that my husband has always done more than his share of childcare – not because he’s helping me out with something that’s really my responsibility, but because it’s a shared responsibility.

Being a parent and running a business is tough.  But in my experience it’s no tougher – and in some ways it’s a lot simpler – than being a parent and having a job.  Oh, and while I’m at it.  Why are there no support services for Dadpreneurs?

Mothers need not apply?

Odd that I missed this story about how important flexible working is to working mothers because it’s been on  my mind a lot recently.    I’m my own boss which means I can  manage my own hours and  can fit in a life with children as well as one with a briefcase, a blackberry and a business suit.  A few days ago, I was offered an opportunity which looked so great, at such a fantastic company, that it was impossible to pass on it just because it would mean taking a job and joining the rush hour rat race again.  I met them.  I liked them.  They liked me enough to ask me back for a second interview before I’d got home from the first one.  Then I started talking about the details of what what flexible working might look like in practice and suddenly there’s total silence from their end.  Now, I could be being  unfair.  Too impatient to do the deal and too ready to conclude that it’s not going to happen. I really hope so because it’s a great opportunity and I’d love to do it.   Or I could have just reinforced my sneaking suspicion that the only way to make sure that I can work and spend time with my children  is to run my own show.  This is easy enough for me thanks to the industry I work in.  How does everyone else manage?  No wonder the fastest growing sector in the economy over the past few years has been in women-owned small businesses.