Transcript
I recommend to start planning on how to balance family and entrepreneurship as early as possible. If you are starting to get pregnant and planning to get pregnant, you should already discuss your vision for an appropriate combination of family life and entrepreneurship. Because it’s important to build a foundation with your partner on how you two would like it to have in the future, even if it’s really hard to imagine how it will look like and how your child will change your lives. It’s important to go into pregnancy and into this new family thing with a clear intention, because if your intention is clear, it’s always easier to then change some things around it, when the baby is there, than it is when the baby is born and you haven’t talked about it at all.
So please make sure that you and your partner discuss what you want your family life to look like, who wants to take what responsibilities or who wants to have which amount of share in the role distribution. It’s important to know what your partner thinks, and it’s important to know for your partner to know what you think and what you want and what your wishes and desires are for balancing family and entrepreneurship.
Not only in my family, but also in other freelancer and entrepreneur couples, which are also parents, it’s easier to maintain the 50/50 role distribution because, freelancing partners and entrepreneurs are used to structuring their days in a more flexible way and they are also used to their income fluctuating more than like employees are.So, yes, right now I think that it’s easier for parents who are freelancers and entrepreneurs, and when both parents are like that to maintain 50/50 role distribution. But I think that it has not to be like this forever.
Of course, it would also be possible for two employee parents to like have this construct of 50/50 role distribution. But what I see is that like nearly almost, the money is the reason for not doing it. Like one person has a higher income, and then it’s clear that this person often it’s the man, but not always, but often it’s men will go on working and the other person, often it’s the mother will have a reduced income, will take more responsibility for childcare and for the family and less for her own career and her own working life.
Of course, money is always an important factor. But, I guess the starting point should be somewhere else, because if you get a child it is an important and a huge change in both partners’ lives. And if you have discussed about, oh, “how do we want to have this this life to look like when we have a child?”, “Who wants to do what?”, “Who wants to be responsible for what kind of things?” This should be the starting point, and if ywe want to do 50/50 role distribution, you should go from there and find solutions for, okay if we step back like money wise, where and how do we manage this? Where does money come from? How long can we live like on lower standards? How long can we live from reduced income? So that we can manage to maintain 50/ 50 role distribution. So you both should be like the reason for implementing a certain kind of role distribution. This would be a huge shift in people’s minds I guess. But I think it’s an important shift.
