Babies and business
Combining motherhood with running a business brings its own unique set of challenges — but flexibility usually isn’t one of them
Jeanette Dunne, pictured with her baby, Holly, runs Aesthetic Clinic, Dublin with her business partner Sinead Gallagher
Thursday March 06 2008
However, six of the 32 finalists in the Small Firms Association’s National Small Business Awards — to be held on 12 March — are women, running companies in the food and drink, corporate relocation and software sectors.
Women set up businesses for a variety of reasons, but for many, it’s about balancing work with having a family. Indeed, motherhood has also inspired the types of businesses women have set up in recent years, among them maternity boutiques and online shopping sites for baby products and gifts such as Babywishbox.com.
Miriam Ahern, who owns and manages Align Management Solutions, reckons a woman needs to be creative about her career if she wants to have a family. “It depends on your mindset. If you think you can only progress within an established corporation, you’re setting a narrow track for yourself. If, on the other hand, you look at your experience and capabilities and see how far you can take them yourself, that opens up a whole different field of options.”
One woman who has taken such an approach is Darina Loakman. She runs Iamawahm.com, which provides support to women working from home. She was named Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Female Entrepreneur in 2006 and is currently running a ‘Doing your Business in your Bathrobe’ competition on the site.
“I was working outside the home until April 2005 and finished for a combination of reasons,” she says. “One of the main ones was I had three children in full-time childcare, which was costing me €30,000 a year before tax. I felt I wanted to do something myself so I would have more control over my time. I hadn’t a clue what to do at first, so I started to look on the internet. I found lots of ‘work-at-home-mom’ websites with irrelevant US content. Because I wished there was something there to assist me to work from home, I came up with the idea of providing just that.”
The site offers tools, information and resources and Loakman runs a weekly podcast called ‘Mumcentric’.
One of the greatest myths about home working, she says, is that you won’t need childcare. “You can cut down your bill significantly, but you do need some form of childcare —maybe getting someone into the house for a couple of hours or putting the kids in a creche three mornings a week. The flexibility is great; if your children are sick you can check on them.”
Samantha Judge, owner of recruitment firm RightFit, worked in media sales for years and found it quite flexible, but chose to run her own company. “Setting up a company as a woman involves a huge commitment. One of my main motivations was I never wanted to ask a boss again if I could drop my children to school first,” she says.
A new approach
Jeanette Dunne set up the Renew Aesthetic Clinic on Baggot Street, Dublin with her business partner Sinead Gallagher in 2005. Dunne had a baby, Holly, two months ago, and Gallagher is due a baby in April.
“Sinead and I talked about how we would combine setting up the business with having a family. I wanted it to be up and running, rather than have the baby first, as I worried I mightn’t be as enthusiastic about it then,” says Dunne.
She stopped working a week before the birth but now feels she should have taken two weeks as it was a bit of a struggle. She is taking four months’ maternity leave, returning at the end of March, just in time for Gallagher to take hers. “Most of my friends took nine months’ maternity leave and they hated the thoughts of going back to work. Because I’m my own boss I don’t feel that way. I can dictate my own hours and be flexible. Luckily, my mother is going to mind Holly, which will give me peace of mind. If I do have to work late, I can ring her and explain rather than trying to get to a creche at 6pm. My husband will collect Holly too on his way home from work.”
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