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How to Freelance Around Your Young Family
Balancing parenthood with a freelance business is always a challenge, but worth the struggle
The freelance dream of working flexibly around your young family is often shown as a simple route to happiness and financial freedom. If only it was that easy. Freelance work that gives you more time at home can require far more hours than a typical desk job. Add personal responsibility and financial pressures, and you might feel like jumping back into the security of a 9–5.
Have you seen the freelancers who seem to have it all? A daily yoga routine, before a few hours work, then back to pick up the kids from school by 3pm. These unreal views of freelancing can make you feel like a failure, unhappy with your inability to make it all work.
But you can make it work. Despite the pressures of your family, you can juggle everything to build a successful business with young children. It just takes planning, flexibility, and honest communication with those around you.
Communicate with other members of your family
Many friends and family don’t understand that being at home all day doesn’t mean you’re sitting around doing nothing. Before you know it, you’re asked to collect parcels, do small errands, and enjoy surprise visits.
Working out a plan with your significant others will ensure that everyone knows what you will and won’t be doing. Explain that having the freedom to do the school run or stay at home means that working hours are even more precious. Be proactive and make plans to see friends in time slots that suit you.
If you have a partner at home, talk honestly about the pressures on you, and decide who will do what around the house. Your freelancing business won’t succeed if you’re still trying to manage everything for your family. If you’re returning to work after a break to have children, it's difficult to transition from stay-at-home to working-parent. Having agreed roles will help make it smoother.
Prioritise tasks
Often there’s so much to do with your freelance business, it’s hard to know where to begin. And being a freelancing parent means fitting…
