This weekend I hosted an event in collaboration with Tamara Gal-On and Alev Lenz called “Parenting vs The Music Industry?”.

Whenever I’ve heard Parenting discussed by colleagues it’s implied that having children is an impediment to working in music – but is this really the case? Recently I’ve raised the subject privately with friends who are also parents it has led onto some loooong discussions, but it’s rarely discussed more openly. I also found that quite a few artists and industry colleagues who don’t have children but might like to one day are actively worried about how they will cope with their chosen career and a family – interestingly this is one of the factors that Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean-In identified as a factor holding back young women from taking on senior roles, even before they had kids. So I assembled a group of parents and non-parents, male and female, some artists, some business owners or execs (and assorted children!) to discuss this together and share tips and advice.

Overall we concluded there’s no one way of being a parent in the music industry: each family and work dynamic is different and so patterns that you see represented among friends or in the media which involve, say, a year of maternity leave and then returning to work and paying for a permanent nursery place will probably look very different for us. Also that as our children grow and our careers change we’ll likely want to constantly re-evaluate and adjust our arrangements to fit everyone’s current needs. This chimes with research by author Laura Vanderkam for her book “I Know How She Does It” who researched how high-achieving women with children use the 168 hours we all have each week. Her work challenges the idea that if you have a demanding job you “never” see your kids, and each week she mapped looked completely different but with time for friends, kids, work and – yes – sleep!

Key themes that came out of our discussion included the transition into parenthood; staying visible; having increased productivity, creativity and focus after kids; choosing collaborators who support your parent-role; co-operative childcare; and maintaining your mental health and wellbeing so you can achieve professionally and parent well.

Transitioning

We talked about transitioning back to work after having a child or more children. One of the key themes here was that there was a mental leap to make that was harder in some ways than the physical reality of becoming a parent. How we saw ourselves and our identities shifted, and it took a while to make this adjustment and feel fully comfortable with our new roles. Naomi Stadlen’s book “What Mothers Do When It Looks Like Nothing” was mentioned as a great book looking at the experience of mothers specifically. We also talked about the lack of similar guidance and support for fathers, who also experience a profound change.

Visibility

Sometimes it was hard to stay as visible after having children. We talked about not being able to be out as frequently in the evenings hanging out or going to gigs (although also we all did still socialise and network), and also sometimes that once we had our children we were seen as on perpetual ‘maternity leave’ even after restarting at work and clients couldn’t ‘see’ us and we weren’t ‘front-of-mind’ for assignments and opportunities as it was assumed we would be unavailable. Strategies for staying visible included being active on social media and talking about what we’re working on as you would in physical networking, attending conferences or events where you could make your presence felt to a number of contacts in a short period of time and taking on more high-profile projects rather than being a ‘background’ person.

Increased Focus

Both artists and entrepreneurs with kids said they had experienced very fertile (sorry) creative periods around the time they had their children and felt very determined to invest in their own projects and companies. Some had decided to drop some of their commitments and focus in on a small number of areas they could achieve significant success in. Others talked about being more productive and having a greater output of work even though their time was often more limited.

Collaborators

It was important to parents to have a support network and to work with collaborators that were accommodating of any changes in their work pattern. Collaboration was also a clever way to get more done, to get encouragement with your work and also to leverage the power of more than one network to support your projects. Parenthood was also an opportunity to make new relationships and join new networks (I follow Mothers-Meeting, Start-Up Mums, Doing-It-For-The-Kids and several online parent groups which include quite a few freelancers).

Co-Operative Childcare

Most of the participants were self-employed and they relied on partners, siblings, grandparents, friends, other freelance parents alongside paid childcare options to care for their child while they worked. Sometimes the carers would come to meetings, conferences or on-tour — particularly with babies and pre-school aged children or to cover work that came up at short notice such as a recording session or conference call. There was very much a feeling that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and that this could be a positive rather than relying on one type of care. Home Schooling was mentioned as a possible option that might work for an artist/two creatives co-parenting. I’ve noticed quite a few co-working creches starting up to support this trend: Third-Door Work Hub and Nursery, Huckletree West, Cuckooz Nest and Let’s Play Co-Working and 24-hour childcare services such as Emergency Childcare.co.uk and solo-babysitters such as JossyCare.

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Several people talked about having formal or informal counselling or coaching of some kind to support themselves either in the first year after having a child or on a longer term basis. This helped with everything from our relationships with our partners to how we prioritise our clients and our parenting style. It was seen as a vital part of being able to work effectively and really enjoy work.

Thanks to everyone who took part, and to @dragonsanddasies for sponsoring our album sleeve drawing competition for the kids who came along to the event.

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