Parent Entrepreneurs Struggle to Maintain a Balance

CHATHAM, ON, Oct. 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - A survey has revealed that nearly three-quarters of entrepreneurial parents feel guilty about not spending enough time with their kids.

The poll, conducted by business consultants Chandra Clarke and Terence Johnson, found that 74% of entrepreneurial parents said they often felt guilty about the amount of time they spent away from their children.

Clarke said the findings showed that "being a parent and running a business can be a real juggling act."

"It's clear from our survey that entrepreneurial parents feel the pressure of trying to do two hard things well," she said.

"This jives with our own experience and what we've heard anecdotally from other people in our position," said Clarke.

Clarke and Johnson are the authors of The Entrepreneurial Parent: Run Your Business, Raise Your Family, Keep Your Sanity! The book discusses their own experience of founding a business and growing it to a successful exit, while raising four children.

"It can be incredibly challenging to get the right balance between your work life and your home life at the best of times," said Johnson. "But running a business tends to be all consuming, especially in the startup stage, and if you've combined that with starting a family, it's hard to know if you're doing enough for your kids. Especially in their formative years. I can see why parent entrepreneurs would struggle with that, as well as time for themselves and their spouses outside the business."

Clarke notes there are very few supports for entrepreneurs, so they're left to muddle through.

"We learned a lot of things the hard way, because a lot of the networking groups are geared toward young entrepreneurs, or older, mostly male executives who tend to rely on supportive spouses. With the rate of new business startups on the rise in this post-pandemic era, we want to make it easier for the next cohort to achieve their dreams."

www.entrepreneurial-parent.com

SOURCE The Entrepreneurial Parent