I began this website because I thought starting a business would give me the flexibility that my job couldn’t. Looking around, I saw lots of other new mums struggling with the same things as me – not wanting to miss their child’s first few years by working full-time, not wanting to spend a fortune on childcare and being disappointed by the part-time jobs on offer. And I wanted to help.
Helping people take back control over their working and family lives has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? For cultural and financial reasons, it tends to be the mum who works part time and manages the family while dad works full-time. But surely we should be moving towards a more equal sharing of these responsibilities? By encouraging mums into business, am I keeping mums in the home and dads in the office?
I hope not, but I do have good reasons if I am. Starting a business and becoming a parent are both tough learning curves. Doing both together is enough to make your head spin. Changing the traditional roles, starting a business and becoming a parent all at the same time is a step too far for most of us! Plus I’m blogging from my personal experience – I would love my husband to work less than full-time and spend more time with our children, but we haven’t found a way to do it yet. When you’re starting out in business and parenthood at the same time it helps if there’s at least one steady income in the family. And it takes time to get a steady income if you’re building up a business.
There are dads out there who have started businesses so that they can see more of their children. A few people (including my brother, in fact) have asked me why I don’t include dads in Business Plus Baby, so I wanted to redress the balance a bit and introduce Dadpreneur Week. The trouble is I haven’t exactly been inundated by guest posts from dadpreneurs! If there are any men out there who have started a business so they can spend time with their babies or toddlers and would like to be guest bloggers, please do send me a message!
You’ll be able to read a post from my one and only dadpreneur guest blogger tomorrow – I hope to feature a few more blokes around here soon!
photo credit: jessica.garro
You are right, we hear the term “mumpreneur” lots these days but looking forward to the dads perspective!!
I would definately be interested in guest blogging as I work part time, have a gorgeous daughter and building up our online biz ….. and we want more children!! Life is never dull x
Life certainly isn’t dull – I haven’t got the time, LOL!
Thanks for you comment, Donna. Do drop me a line with your ideas for a guest post, I’m always happy to hear from anyone who has something interesting, useful or inspiring for mums (or dads!) who are running a business around small children. All the info is on the ‘Work with business plus baby’ page (click link at the top of this page).