My daughter just turned two months old today and as she finally settled in for her morning nap, I ran down to our basement home office (baby monitor in hand) to cross a few things off my to-do list. On today's list: some business related to a pending office move for my company and phone calls to make to get my daughter on daycare wait lists.
In the years leading up to my daughter's birth, I thought a lot about the challenges of being an entrepreneur and having a child. With no parental leave as an option for the self-employed, (though there has been talk of amending that at the federal level lately), I admit I often focused on the absence of a paid maternity leave as a big drawback for the entrepreneur planning a family. Certainly a paid year off would be lovely (though I have my reservations about how useful that is for the self-employed, a topic I'll touch on in a future posting), but now that I sit here with baby in arms, the biggest issue on my mind is actually childcare.
Affordable, available, reliable childcare.
This debate was of course opened up at a federal level two elections back when the Conservatives introduced the Child Tax Benefit, i.e., the $100 a month to theoretically help families with childcare needs. And, as the critics argued at the time, the $100, while a lovely gesture, is really not the issue. Childcare remains, in most provinces and certainly here in B.C., expensive and frankly a bit elusive, as the fact that I'm putting my daughter on wait lists for care that will begin 28 months from now should illustrate.
There's a very real lack of childcare for children under two and a half years of age which poses a real problem for those of us who need to go back to work early, either for our personal financial needs or for the financial health of our businesses. The cost of childcare is such that for many families it becomes a zero sum equation for one parent to work and childcare to be paid for.
These are issues which all parents – not just the self-employed – in this province face, but the entrepreneur has a specific dilemma in that it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to have someone step in and cover your position while you're off caring for an infant. Yes, help can be brought in for the company overall, and in my case I'm very lucky to have a business partner to share the role of running the business with, but ultimately your business cannot afford for you to be off for too long – whether that absence is paid or not. Access to affordable and reliable childcare would ease the way for entrepreneurial parents to mind the health of both their businesses and their families. And, while this is an issue which impacts both male and female entrepreneurs, its impact is arguably felt by women the most. With women-run businesses being one of the largest growing segments of the economy – one million women are projected to own a business in Canada by the end of this year – this is an issue which really needs to be addressed, for the health of our economy, women and children.
