Why Aren’t There More Parents in Startups?
If you ask any 30-something if they would like to start a company, odds are they would say “Yes.” But ask a 30-something working parent the same question, you’d probably get a “#$@&%*! No!” (Profanity optional).
It’s because parenting & child care are a lot of work. And the workload is getting bigger.
According to the Pew Research Center, the average amount of time spent per week on child care by both mothers and fathers have increased dramatically in the last 30 years, especially for fathers. Fathers’ time spent on child care has tripled in the last half century, whereas it increased by 57% for mothers in the same time period.
As a parent of a 2-year old and a co-founder of a tech company myself, I’ve done my share of changing diapers, feeding, and reading stories and I’ve found it hard to mix them with pushing code to GitHub, and doing customer development, and designing the mobile app user experience. (Ironically, the app we are working on, CubbySpot, helps parents find child care).
For a lot of parents of young children, It’s really hard to imagine doing the all-nighters at work when you have the all-nighters at home.
And I could only imagine it would be harder for mothers to start a new venture. A Kauffman Foundation article cited a report that confirms that:
One recent report said that nearly one-third of US women in the science, technology and engineering (SET) fields said they were “likely to quit within a year.” According to one report “fully 52 percent of highly qualified women working for SET companies quit their jobs, driven out by hostile work environments, isolation, extreme work pressures, and a lack of clarity surrounding career paths.”
Apart from the amount of time and effort it takes to build a successful business, there’s also the financial risk.
While the oft-cited statistic “9 out of 10 startups fail” is inaccurate, I still think the odds are stacked against you when you start a business, as the fit between your product and your intended customers has yet to be established and never guaranteed. There may not even be a sizeable market for you to begin with.
Raising a child now costs over $240,000 on average and I think that will get bigger over time. Even if we take into account the location, standard of living, and earning capacity, parents are spending a lot on their children.
Your parental instincts would advise you not to make the entrepreneurial jump when you have a mortgage to pay, mouths to feed, and even the occasional hobby. If you have a job and/or steady income and you’re a parent, you’d probably be hard-pressed to trade the security for uncertainty.
You might say that there are grants and government support for new businesses. That is correct, but the pool dries up a bit for the 30-something entrepreneurs as a lot of the grants are for younger entrepreneurs (age 18–29). In Canada, 52% of births are of mothers over the age of 30.
It seems like there is a systemic sleeper hold where parents are constrained by several factors like financial risk and lack of support and submitting defeat to the vise-like grip.
If we really want our economy to thrive, we need to rethink how parents are integrated into the small business sector. I say we definitely need to do more of these:
Support more parents of young children who start tech companies
Support can come in a variety of forms: trying their software, buying their app, sharing their blog posts, liking their Facebook pages, or following them on Twitter.
A lot of startups primarily run on the founder’s passion and any form of support is like rocket fuel (or a 1-up mushroom). The more of it, the better.
Be encouraging
If a friend of yours is considering starting a business but is apprehensive about financial commitments to his or her family, try not to douse the spark of the idea.
Instead, suggest to them to validate their idea first. This is ideally done by speaking to a good enough number of potential customers. That “good enough” number depends by business, but it’s definitely better than zero.
Foster a more parent-friendly work environment
Work in startups is notorious for its disregard of one’s stamina and time. As more and more tech startup founders and employees age, the things that have enabled the massive growth of startups are becoming the things that make it unattractive.
Having more conversations about the challenges of maintaining a healthy work-life balance is a start. Openly supporting flexibility and time for child care would be great as well. Daddies and mommies would love you for doing that.
My wife (and co-founder) and I had a chat recently and she said that we live in a culture where parents are not appreciated in the workplace and even avoided in startups.
I agree with her.
Let’s fix this.
Regnard Raquedan is a co-founder at CubbySpot and The Pink Basket Project. He has a daughter and is currently expecting another child with his wife.
