Mum’s The Business

BBC News:

Mothers are increasingly fed up with jobs that do not allow them to spend enough time with their children.

So instead, they are starting their own businesses.

The number of women working for themselves has leapt by nearly 20% since 2000, according to official figures, and now tops a million.

And an opinion poll commissioned by the government shows that the most significant factor in the increase is a desire among women for a better balance between work and family life.

The biggest motivation for going it alone - according to 70% of those polled - was to be able to work more flexibly,

Three out of four people said that the balance between their work life and family life was better when they ran their own business, according to the YouGov survey.

Saira Khan, who shot to fame as a finalist on the BBC television show The Apprentice, travelled round Britain to report on the phenomenon.

Once keen to work for Sir Alan Sugar, one of Britain’s most demanding bosses, when she got married and decided to have children, she realised that working for someone else wouldn’t work for her.

Two years ago she set up her own business selling natural skin care products for babies and then in April her own baby arrived.

As a new “mumpreneur”, she wanted to find out how businesswomen with young children manage to juggle both aspects of their lives.

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