It takes a village to raise a child and run your own business

Wednesday, 05 February 2020

I will never forget sitting in bed at 2am with a cup of tea, smiling at my husband and my new baby girl and feeling on top of the world. Wow, those early days sure can lull you into a false sense of security, can’t they? There I was, the mother of a newborn baby, an almost two-and-a-half-year-old pocket rocket, and my own online business. I was living the dream, as they say. Or was I?

 

Owning your own business and raising a family is not as easy as some entrepreneurs make it look – as I was soon to find out.

 

Juggling the conflicting demands of your time, energy and emotions can be incredibly challenging. Sometimes, it feels nigh on impossible. I’d heard talk of working when the baby is sleeping – but when you have a toddler that needs constant supervision and attention, it’s not quite that easy. Add feeling constantly tired to this mix, and it can be a perfect storm. Growing a business is a lot like having a child – it needs constant attention and a lot of your time. When you have human children that need the same from you, it’s easy to feel disheartened, and eventually, burn out.

 

The importance of support

 

There is an African proverb that says ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and in this day and age I believe that metaphorical village can come in many different forms and shapes. Grandparents, aunties and uncles, childminders, playgroups, schools and businesses all need to come together to support parents to give that child the best start in life because those first few months of a baby’s life (and motherhood for that matter) are so precious.

 

For that reason, I will forever be grateful for the great timing of our second baby’s birth. The UK government had just launched the shared parental leave scheme allowing both parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave – 37 weeks of which is paid – if they are eligible i.e both parents have both been working for the past 6 months in the same job and share the responsibility for the child. If you are in this position, it is worth checking out the gov.uk website to find out if you are entitled to claim maternity, paternity or shared parental leave and calculate how much pay you will be entitled to.

 

However, statutory shared parental pay is just £148.68 a week (or 90% of an employee’s average weekly earnings – whichever is lower), which is just one of the reasons many families are not able to take advantage of the scheme.

It’s also a complicated scheme; my husband was actually the first person in his company to speak to his HR team about doing it, and he had to do a lot of research to work out the intricacies of the system because they were so unfamiliar with it.

 

Thankfully, we were able to go ahead and my husband took nine weeks of shared parental leave in total over that first six months, in three short blocks, mainly because he wanted to keep up with his role so that his career didn’t suffer, and so that his employer didn’t need to hire anyone to cover for him. Fear of others’ perception and jeopardising one’s career is another reason only 1% of eligible fathers or partners are actually taking the leave they are entitled to.

 

What support meant for my business                                                                  

 

It was so reassuring to have my husband around to look after our son (who was almost three by then and had so much energy) and be more involved in those early days of our daughter’s life. It also meant that I could keep in touch with my clients and keep my business ticking along while having a break in my maternity leave. Having even a couple of hours a day, while my husband was around, to make phone calls, respond to emails from or on behalf of my clients, create an email campaign for a customer’s product launch, meant that I was able to action these tasks in a timely manner instead of letting the tasks pile up and stressing about the work that was waiting for me when my baby was asleep. Customers were looked after, my baby was looked after and my business was still moving forward.

 

As a country, we still are way behind other countries like Sweden where parents are entitled to 480 days of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted. It is my firm belief that we should encourage people to take the leave they are already entitled to before pushing for more. It is vital we collectively support our colleagues, friends, husbands and partners to take the shared parental leave available to them (even if it’s for part of the offered time) so that mothers can be supported from the start, and babies build that all-important bond with both parents. 

 

   

Jackie Van Baren is an Online Business Manager supporting high achieving entrepreneurs to grow their business by implementing systems and processes that allow their business to soar.

jackie@jvbconnect.com

www.jvbconnect.com

 

It’s About Time is an initiative developed by NatWest Cymru in conjunction with Darwin Gray Solicitors, the University of South Wales (USW), and the Federation of Small Businesses. Research carried out by USW showed that women in business mentioned ‘time’ as a major factor in their lives – whether literally never having enough of it, or finding the right time to launch a business and the right time to grow a business.

 

The It’s About Time series of blogs and articles are designed to inspire, inform and educate through the stories of women (and men) who are finding their own routes to professional and personal success. It is put together by Gemma Collins, NatWest Cymru’s business growth enabler for Cardiff.