The nation’s battalion of working mums are turning more and more to freelancing and contract working as a viable option, new research shows.
If you’re a sole trader, it doesn’t matter if you’re an umbrella company contractor or a freelancer – you know exactly how flexible your days are. You can construct your work time so that it revolves around you instead of you having to revolve around it, and it turns out that incredible flexibility has been discovered by working mums in the UK in order to more easily balance family responsibilities with a desire – or a need – to work.
Professional Contractors Group says that, according to their data, there are over 200,000 freelancers in the UK that are also working mums – a figure that amounts to one out of every eight! The number of mums working as contract workers has also shot up by an incredible rate over just a few short years, with PCG stating that growth for this subset of freelancers was 25 per cent from 2008 to 2011.
For what it’s worth, this new figure really isn’t all that surprising to me. Not that it’s an unwelcome bit of news – much the opposite in fact – but working mums are nothing new in the Western world, especially with the economy being in the situation it’s in right now. Many families find it a necessity to have both parents working at once, despite the fact that the cost of child care can easily eat into the profits made from having two incomes, but freelancing or contract work can eliminate the need for having to pay for costly child-care out of pocket because of the flexibility built right into the activity.
It’s completely possible to be both a caring, loving parent that attends to the needs of your child whilst also working as a contract worker, especially if you work in a sector that allows you to complete projects from the relative comfort of your own home. Yes, it can be a trial to work even part-time and see to a child’s needs, but no one ever said this parenting thing was going to be easy. Luckily the rewards you reap make up for all those sleepless nights – and the good thing about contract working is that you don’t have to worry about missing any of those amazing milestones as your child develops into an adult if you’re home to see them!
