The other day one of my blogger friends forwarded me a message she had received from a marketer representing a lawyer looking to break into social media through the “mommy market.” The marketer wrote:
Many professional women plan to go back to work after they have a baby. But when the reality of a little one at home sets in, some aren’t eager to get back to the office. For women in the professional services field, there is another option – they can become ‘entreprofessionals’ and start their own businesses.
Mommies considering this path will certainly find advantages, like more time at home with baby. But there are also some potential pitfalls if they don’t protect themselves. XXXXXX is the founder of XXXXX law firm. He has helped many people legally start and protect their businesses. He can offer your readers tips and advice on starting a business.
I was appalled. The implicit sexism. The talking down to female business owners — most of whom do not spend significantly “more time at home with baby.” The suggestion that women who start businesses do it because they want to “work from home” and not because they have big ambitions that can only be fulfilled by running their own companies. The reference to these women as “mommies.” (Note to marketers: Only my own children can refer to me as “mommy” without me taking offense.)
The trivialization of female entrepreneurs is disturbing for a number of reasons. First, it minimizes the incredible impact women are having on the economy: as Forbes recently reported, women-owned businesses are expected to create millions of jobs this year. To expand our economy as a whole, we need to be thinking collectively about how to support women in business, particularly by giving them access to the same networks as their male counterparts. This is not just about women and their desire to be “mommies.”
Second, we have to stop giving women the false impression that starting their own business is going to be a panacea for their lack of fulfillment in the corporate world or their work-life crises. Successfully starting a business is very labor intensive. It is often not very lucrative at the beginning. It requires tremendous personal drive and passion far beyond a desire to have a more flexible work schedule. This needs to be understood, lest women opt out of their corporate jobs only to find themselves working harder for less money and fewer benefits.
The internet is rife with marketing ploys aimed at mothers who want out of the corporate world. (Sharon Lerner had a great piece in The American Prospect about this recently.) The irony is that many of these schemes ask women to invest money in services they don’t need or get-rich quick scams destined to fail. They victimize women who are desperate to change their lives, while simultaneously damaging the credibility of the millions of real female entrepreneurs.
But even worse, legitimate marketers and businesses, like Lawyer X, are adopting the language of their slimier counterparts — language that implies women who start businesses are just doing a little something on the side to make pin money. It’s offensive and untrue, and yet the more this kind of language seeps into the marketplace, the more it becomes the narrative of female entrepreneurs. We start businesses to get out of the corporate world and spend more time with our kids, not because we are real businesspeople who have important ideas to actualize.
By the way, those of us who work for companies and don’t plan to start our own businesses, we need to be irate about this too. It promotes the idea that women aren’t real businesspeople and that their ambitions are limited. The success of female entrepreneurs boosts the credibility of all women; their trivialization hurts us all too.
Related links:
- Part of the problem is online resources for work at home moms assume they are really stay at home moms who need a little extra cash — not ambitious, powerful women in their own right. Consider the WAHM.com homepage, which reads: New to working at home? Learn from our large library of articles and recipes. (Emphasis is mine.) This is only appropriate if you are a work from home chef.
- The Wall Street Journal recently posted this article about people who work from home being asked to do favors. While men were substantially profiled in the article, I suspect that women who work at home are even bigger targets for such requests.
- A few months ago Joanne Bamberger (PunditMom) posted this open letter to The New York Times about the paper’s trivialization of women in the business of social media. Funny how The Times never writes stories like these about men’s efforts to build their businesses and brands.
When I was a teenager, I decided to get smart with my mother and start calling her by her first name. She sat me down in one of the most pivotal conversations of my life, looked me in the eye and proceeded in a firm but loving tone. “There are millions of people in this world who can call me Annette. There are four beings on this planet who I birthed and am raising who can call me mother. I am not your friend, although I love and like you. I am your mother.”
It was a distinction that has stayed with me. I wear the badge of “mummy” with deep pride. But heaven help anyone other than my children who call me that! Thank you for this fabulous piece, and to you and Joanne for the reminder about the honorable way this title should be used. Not in some tawdry marketing piece.
As for the larger picture you paint, to remind us home based entrepreneurs that we are part of something much greater, I also thank you. Being in that stage of long hours of hard work and early days for income, I needed to hear this message today.
Well said! The way the word “mommies” is bandied about commercially is, to be frank, annoying to me. I want to challenge the notion that we can’t be something other than “mommy” to the world once we have kids.
Your point about the importance of small businesses is well taken, too.
MamaBee- well, it was me who got the pitch. And to her credit, the PR person who sent it was very receptive to my feedback.
I’m just 6 months into my business- my “mommy” lifestyle business (a term which I’ve written about http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morra-aaronsmele/entrepreneurs-not-who-you_b_656934.html). My small business is small indeed, but not because I’m a mom. Because I like my life.
I’m grateful for affordable services that can help me grow my business with limited resources. I’m not grateful when people assume I work this way bc I want to be a mommy. When I was single and worked in Corporate America, I dreamed every day of the moment I didn’t have to show up at my office and just be there no matter what I actually had to do. I dreamed of the day I called the shots, worked cause I loved it, and cashed checks that I alone was the reason for. THAT is why I suck up the many small miseries of entrepreneurship. Nothing to do with little people and playgrounds…
I know so many women who want to opt out of the corporate world to have more time at home with their children. Very understandable, but I know too many who make the decision to start a business thinking they are going to get more time at home, more money, or both, only to find that they work 2-3 times more than they ever did at a corporation. Now they have less time with the kids, make less money and have zero benefits. I think there’s a myth that home-based businesses are the key to some mother’s flexibility desires.
I hope that women who dive into self-employment run the numbers and know what they are getting into. Owning a home-based business can be very successful and rewarding, but I doubt it’s any easier than working at a company. You need to want it for all the right reasons.
Another fantastic post, as usual. This topic irks me, too – especially as a corporate warrior who left that world to start my own mom-oriented business (I published a kid’s book called, My Mommy’s on a Business Trip) and then had to return to corporate a year later. It is real business, even if it is from your home office, and we all have the P&Ls to prove it. Now I’m working to get back to my business so I can make a much bigger impact on the world than I ever could from my cubicle.
I worked from home long before I had children — it’s just more efficient and productive, and if you work in a low-paying field (e.g. journalism) the upsides of self-employment definitely beats topping out on a payscale.
The “mommy” thing puzzles me. It is like our society is trying to trivialize mothers by giving us a childish name. As you say, I’m only “mommy” to my own children. Well, and my husband when he’s talking to me in front of the kids. We tried not doing that, and now our 3 year old also calls us “honey.”
I often wish that I had an idea for my own company. But, like @Morra says- it is not because of the kids. I get so frustrated watching the people in charge do boneheaded things- and worse, having to implement those boneheaded things. I’d like to be in charge so that any boneheaded things I implement are at least my own fault.
But I don’t really want to set up shop as a consultant, and I don’t have any ideas for a business that would play to my core strengths… so I’m staying in my job.
I’ve been ruminating over the pitch Morra received for weeks trying to pinpoint exactly why I found it so repulsive. I agree with you all that the title Mommy is one reserved for my children alone. I cringe when I hear it used elsewhere as way to categorize women. But more offensive than that is what both Morra and The Mama Bee brought up in terms of the challenges of working from home and being a business owner. This kind of work is NOT work that one can saunter into lightly. So my issue is with the simultaneous denigration of mothers and small business owners. Not anyone can do it. It’s not necessarily suitable for stay at home moms. And it’s not easy money. Preying on moms who are already overworked and underpaid on the homefront is just, well, mean. Boo hiss.
I am always a bit taken aback when working women who hire me for birth doula services ask me what happens to my children while I attend their births. I see this tendency to view my business as a means of remaining a “stay at home mommy,” instead of viewing it as a business about which I am passionate enough to fore-go regular work hours. Like all working parents, I have to manage the demands of family life along side work, and have to make important childcare decisions. I’m just saying that when my husband leaves for the weekend due to commitment for his own brand, no one asks him who is taking care of the children. Everybody already knows.
Great post and links. I found your site through a tweet and glad I did! I have been a SAHM for 14 years and am now becoming a WAHM. I have worked harder at this new venture than at any ‘regular’ job and am thrilled to do so.
I think the lawyer behind that email is a very smart marketer, and I am not appalled by his message in the slightest. Who cares if we are called mothers or mommies? I like being called a Mommy and I don’t find it in any way degrading. You seem to be part of the “Working Mommy Network”–no? I don’t think this man is “talking down to women business owners.” In fact, he is specifically addressing women who are interested in working from home because they hope it will allow them more flexible time to spend with their babies. There are lots of women who want to start their own businesses for other reasons, and I’m sure they are kicking ass and taking names. But if you want a home-based business to be close to your family, that’s okay, too. If anything, it seems like you needed something to take a strong stand on for the purposes of your blog, so you were thrilled to get that email. What fabulous ammunition to get a bunch of “mommies” all riled up. Sheesh.