The Fortunate Life of the #Mumpreneur

Emma Donovan - 9 Mar 16

This last week there’s been much about celebrating women with Mother’s Day last weekend and International Women’s yesterday.  In between the the work/home routine, I’ve been pretty preoccupied; thinking about all the talented, strong, clever and hard-working women who inspire me on a daily basis and who I am proud to call friends, family and colleagues.

The term ‘Mumpreneur’ has been bounced about quite a bit this Mother’s Day season, I’ve seen numerous campaigns across social media, blogging and advertising targeting a ‘new breed’ of woman, and I suspect (as I’m seeing it around so much on-line) I myself am being targeted as one of these new breeds. So what is a Mumpreneur?  It seems to me that it could be used to describe every mum, working or otherwise; each of us has built, developed, grown or nurtured a little life… They are indeed our own little business project, our occupation and preoccupation… our life’s work in fact.

More literally however, the Mumpreneur it appears, is a force to be reckoned with, often balancing multiple jobs/careers or setting up their own, with motherhood and home life – a strong, determined, intelligent and driven woman with high ambition who can increase SEO, cook dinner and blog while breast-feeding and complete her tax return while baking cupcakes with two year olds and ordering the weekly shop on-line….

Yet despite what the clever marketeers might have us believe, it is not a pre-conceived aspiration or something glamorously devised (“Oh darling, I’m going to become a Mumpreneur”).  It is quite frankly, what many mums have been doing for years, and what the mums’ mums were doing before us… at the end of the day it’s ‘Life’ and we’re multi-tasking the arse out of it.

For me, the motherhood v work debate was clean cut even before I fell pregnant.  We need me to work financially and I need me to work for my own peace of mind.  Don’t get me wrong, in the first three months of Arthur arriving, the thought of going back to work reduced me to a blubbering wreck and in those hazy, hormonal driven, maternity days I really thought I may never a) be able and b) want to, work again. But I am project driven and once I felt I was getting the hang of motherhood, I was looking forward to the next venture.

In a rather unexpected twist, since Arthur has joined us, I’ve realised actually how ambitious I am and how much more I want to achieve in both my career as a Marketing Director, and as a business owner and creator of Peas-in-a-Pod Giftware.  I spend my weeks flying by the seat of my pants, working three full-on intensive days in a busy marketing office and spending the other two as a juggling act between developing Peas-in-a-Pod, taking on freelance marketing work, homelife and being Mummy. I figure that if I’m going to be parted from my little man, whether it’s three days, five days or seven days, then there has to be a pretty special reason, and if I’m achieving at and enjoying my work then it’s worthwhile, and hopefully a good life lesson for Arthur when he’s older.

For many women I know, their weeks are also made up of Mumpreneur activity – masterfully juggling motherhood, jobs, housework, careers, studying, setting up businesses, being carers and supportive spouses, volunteering and much more.  It isn’t a coincidence that so many women decide to set up their own businesses or go for that promotion once embarking on motherhood. There’s nothing like creating life to give you an unforgiving ‘can-do’ attitude.

Above all and especially this International Women’s Day, I am thankful to have that choice, to be able to choose to combine motherhood and career and utilise that can-do attitude in all it’s glory.  Many women across the globe don’t have the opportunity or ability to be able to choose either motherhood or career, let alone both and that is both a heartbreaking and humbling reality.

So for all the women and  I know, and for the many more I don’t – those who choose one or the other, or both, or more….Quite simply, you rock. Happy International Women’s Day x

Emma Donovan

I'm Emma, creator of Peas-in-a-Pod gifts and greetings for fun-loving folk, marketeer, living in Kent, mum of Arthur (2) and keeper of a hairy household.

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