Austerity Culture and the Myth of the Mumpreneur
Dr Roberta Garrett, University of East London
This paper comes out of my interest in
contemporary popular domestic fiction and a
piece I wrote on mum’s lit comic fiction. It
was evident that mum’s lit heroines – figures
who are presented as capturing the zeitgeist of
what it means to be a contemporary working
mother – tend either to be self-employed or are
aiming to become so in the future. While many
of the protagonists were freelance writers
(reflecting the author’s own field of expertise)
the novels are also peopled by mothers who were
engaged in small scale business ventures; these
were often linked to traditional feminine
domestic skills and interests (e.g. baking,
needlecraft etc). Significantly (and this holds
true of chick-lit in general) very few of the
female characters worked in the traditional
spheres of employment associated with female
professionals, such as education or healthcare.
I wanted to flag this up before I start
addressing the issue of mumpreneurs more
specifically, as it could be argued that mum’s
lit, and other forms of female-orientated
cultural representations, typify broader shifts
in the cultural narratives woven around maternal
employment. Mum’s lit fiction is representative
of a fairly distinct shift away from dominant
ideology which justified women’s employment from
the 1920s- to 1970s, in which female employment
was sanctioned by an underlying ethos of public
service and self-sacrifice – what we might refer
to as the ‘call the midwife’ ethos. Since the
rise of neo-liberal political culture and
ideology, the prior emphasis on the enhancement
of the public realm through female-dominated
‘caring’ occupations, such as teaching and
nursing, has been replaced by one in which women
are encouraged to retreat into the domestic
realm and transform their existing feminine
skills and interests into commercial
transactions in order to benefit their
individual families. The cultural endorsement
of maternal self-employment thus complies with a
more general ideological thrust towards the
prioritisation of the private over public sector
and state’s desire to unleash the
entrepreneurial spirit in ordinary citizens.
This longer history brings us to the more
specific and recent history of Austerity Culture
and the Myth of the Mumpreneur. I’m going to
cover four main areas in the paper:
Firstly – When and Where does this term
originate?
Secondly – Who/what does it refer to?
Thirdly – How does the figure of the
‘mumpreneur’ enhance the rhetoric of Austerity
culture?
1 What are the origins of the term and where
does it circulate?
While the cultural idealisation of certain kinds
of female run business has a longer history –
aligned to neo-liberal ideals -the circulation
of the term mumpreneur or ‘mom’ preneur (in the
US) is much more recent. Most references –
either in the form of on-line magazines, forums,
in social media and in newspapers, have appeared
in the last decade. The term is therefore,
either explicitly or implicitly aligned with the
recession and imposition of austerity measures .
There are two British on-line magazines, the
Business Mum’s Journal, sponsored by mothercare and
launched in 2008, this was later rivalled by
Mumpreneur Uk, in 2010, there is a US mompreneur
facebook site and a UK Facebook Mumpreneurs
networking site (both started in 2011) aswell as
numerous advice websites on becoming a
mumpreneur. Mumpreneurs UK organises a national
conference with an award scheme sponsored by
Amazon and there are various other award schemes
for successful mumpreneurs. In terms of more
conventional (print) media sources, the Telegraph,
Independent and Daily Mail have run a number of
stories on the growing ‘phenomena’ of the
mumpreneur over the last few years for example,
The Telegraph ran a piece entitled ‘The rise of
the mumpreneur’, The Independent,, ‘mums do the
business’ and Daily Mail, The School Run Entrepreneurs,
The Rise of the Mumpreneur, Who will be crowned our
Mumpreneur of the year? (in reference to the Daily
Mail’s first set of mumpreneur wards to be
announced later this year).
2 What is a mumpreneur?
The definition varies according to source, but
there are certain key factors that mark out
‘mumpreneurs’ from the business community or
entrepreneurs more generally. Firstly, that
they are the parents of young children.
Secondly, that they are female. There are no
dadpreneurs or parentpreneurs, only mumpreneurs.
The term brings together two apparently opposed
terms in an uneasy alliance: the cosiness,
reliability and non-threatening cuddliness
associated with the humdrum and familiar ‘mum’
with the risk taking, wheeler-dealing,
traditional, ‘phallic’ connotations of
entrepreneurship. The mumpreneur is most
frequently depicted as an ‘ordinary’ mum who has
chanced upon a niche selling opportunity
aligned to her everyday mothering activities.
The mumpreneur’s response to the success of her
small scale business venture is frequently
surprise and gratitude. While some
‘inspirational’ stories began by acknowledging a
recession linked redundancy or an inability to
juggle work and childcare within their existing
careers, economic desire or need is rarely
emphasised as a motivation for starting the
business. They are more often portrayed as
searching for work/life balance (in the sense of
assuming the role of primary carer and
housekeeper while still earning) and/or to
assist other mothers by providing particular
products and services which will enhance their
children’s lives. These are a couple of examples
from Mumpreneur Uk:
Sotiria Spantidea, a busy mother of two,
decided to turn her back on her successful IT
career in the City to start an online children’s
boutique store.
Why I quit my city career to set up Butterfly
Occasions …..
My journey into entrepreneurship started as simply an enjoyable hobby, as I loved to search online for unique and unusual items for my children’s bedrooms. I have two little boys aged3 and aged 5 years old, and like many mothers, Ihad ideas of the quality and designs I wanted but often couldn’t find them on the high street or from mainstream retailers.
Soon, I realised that I was pretty good at researching and collating ideas, and decided to share them with friends and family. After receiving positive feedback about my choices of toys and furniture, I decided to take the plungeand turn my hobby into a fully-fledged business!
The biggest challenge however for 2015 will be trying to juggle my business and family life!
It’s not an easy thing to do, but I always try to find time to do the things I love and to be with the people I love. I’m trying not to steal the time I spend with my children to do my business as my family comes first.
Bubble Bum (inflatable car sears)
mumpreneur/owner, Grainne Kelly
How did you come up with the idea for BubbleBum?
I was travelling with my two kids back and forthto England to visit my mother-in-law who was very poorly at the time and every time I arrivedat the car rental desk they didn’t have the car booster seats, even though I had pre-booked them. I got into a real strop and asked loads ofquestions as to why they didn’t have them, to betold simply that they didn’t have the space. After speaking with friends, I found that this is actually a very common problem faced by parents so I decided that there was a need for an inflatable and portable solution that was lightweight and easy to fit into hand luggage.
And from The Business Mum’s Journal
Victoria Dixon, creator of ‘enhance me/’ an on-line service which enhances children’s photographs
‘ I was never intending to make huge profitsrunning my own business – I wanted to dosomething to supplement my husband’s income andhelp us live more comfortably.
In instances in which mumpreneurs are celebrated
founders of sizable companies, the rhetoric that
surrounds them still insistently places
domesticity and family first. For example, the
narrative surrounding Julia Deane, founder of
The Cambridge Satchell Company highlights her
desire to earn money but states that she was
chiefly motivated by her desire to rescue her
child from a sink comprehensive, where she was
apparently being bullied.
When Julie Deane discovered her daughter was being bullied, she vowed to move her to the £12,000-a-year school down the road.
But unable to afford the fees, the housewife satdown at her kitchen table and wrote a list of ten ways to raise money.
She says the greatest reward of her venture has been fulfilling her promise to her daughter.(10th Deceomber, 2012)
Similarly, one The Daily Mail mumpreneur award
nominees, was motivated to start her successful
chocolate company to support her autistic son. Harry Specters chocolates launched in November 2012, after Mona, 45, left her job in NHS corporate governance to make truffles. Her son Ash has autism, and she and her husband Shaz, 48, an engineer, had
grown increasingly concerned about his job prospects on leaving school.
The presentation of these ventures, particularly
in Mumpreneur Uk and Mums in Business reproduces the
visual rhetoric and personal interest narratives
of women’s lifestyle publishing more generally.
As you’ve probably surmised from some of the
examples I’ve mentioned, many of the companies
are orientated towards child products and
services, with names that are consciously cosy
and whimsical: Butterfly Occasions, Bubble Bum, Little
Pickles Marketplace, The Wooden Gnome store, Coochie Coo
Nappies, Corporate Baby, Big Hugs, Mess Around.
Although, surprisingly perhaps, The Daily Mail
featured a Scottish mumpreneur who had started a
successful small brewery, most of the companies
specialized in either luxury or child-safety
products and services (such as Bubble Bum) with a
heavy emphasis on home crafts and a general
ethos of wholesomeness ( organic and natural
products feature heavily). However, like many
small start-up business, they are largely
reliant on internet promotion and sales, using
this as a way of directly appealing to customers
and thus avoiding many of discriminatory
practices that have historically deterred women
from starting small business e.g. women’s
failure to secure the capital necessary to
obtain a shop.
In the final section I want to discuss what I
think are the specific problems with this term
and how it reinforces certain gender and class
positions within the culture of neo-liberalism
generally and the politics of austerity more
specifically.
As many sociologists and cultural critics have
observed, despite its endorsement of competitive
individualism, the rise of neo-liberal politics
has been coterminous with the normalization of a
neo-traditionalist view of family life and the
maternal role in particular (Diane Negra, 2009;
Ringrose and Walkerdine , 2008). As state
support for public funded institutions and
services withers, parental anxiety, particularly
in relation to the health and education of their
offspring, increases.
This is fuelled by an ever intensifying state
and media rhetoric of parental choice,
competition and performativity linked to the
expansion of private education, school league
tables, private healthcare and so on. As primary
caregivers, mothers are encouraged to be
knowledgeable, vigilant and tireless consumers,
seeking out the best possible opportunities and
services for their offspring, and developing a
raft of skills which feed into the now common-
sense assumption that good mothering is
‘intensive’ mothering (Hays, 1996; Douglas and
Michaels, 2004)). The mumpreneur’s stated
desire to achieve ‘work/life’ balance is thus
more accurately the need to combine this mode of
privatized and ‘professionalised’ mothering with
remaining economically productive. As paid child
care is a) highly expensive and b) requires
relinquishing the level of control currently
required to achieve ‘good mother’ status, being
self-employed and engaged in work which is
aligned to motherhood and domesticity seems the
obvious way to resolve the perennial
work/childcare conundrum within patriarchal,
neo-liberal culture.
There are other obvious ways in which the
mumpreneur feeds into a culture of neo-liberal
self-determination and austerity measures.
Firstly, mumpreneurs are often public sector
managers and workers that have either been
pushed or opted to take redundancy in the wake
of coalition cuts to public services.
Secondly, many of the services they provide,
particularly in the area of franchised
playgroups (often with some ‘niche’ element such
as Mess Around – a messy play company) or basic
advice on children’s health and safety( e.g. mini
first aid, a privatized service to instruct mums on
basic first aid tips for children) are moving
into the space vacated by dwindling public
services. As the vast majority of the cited
mumpreneurs are white, middle-class, university
educated women held down professional jobs prior
to becoming mothers, it raises the prospect of
wealthy women charging poorer ones for basic
services (such as toddler playgroups or
healthcare advice) which would, in previous
years, been provided by the state.
These issues key into a more covert aspect of
the celebration of the mumpreneur in terms of
both class and gender. She both banishes and
evokes the specter of two abject feminine
figures. Firstly, the phallic, avaricious,
business woman or ‘career bitch’. While
depictions of business women have become more
commonplace since the 1980s, they are
nonetheless still presented as troubling and
incompatible with normative views of gender
roles and family life. Initial cultural
representations in film and television
frequently presented such women as damaged and
cruel (Working Girl, Baby Boom, Fatal Attraction) while
more recent ‘reality’ programmes, such as
Dragon’s Den or The Apprentice continue to play on
the stereotype of the hard-nosed, anti-maternal
corporate woman or entrepreneur. In addition to
this, women such as Nicola Horlick and dot com
millionaress, Martha Lane Fox become the focus
of both admiration and derision.
In this context, the mumpreneur’s extreme and
performative ‘cosiness’ appears as a screaming
disavowal of the phallic attributes projected
onto such women. Indeed, it could be argued,
that the cultural presentation of mumpreneur
business practices and motivations are far more
closely aligned to a middle-class, feminine,
austerity culture of retro-thrift and ‘make do
and mend’ (addressed by my colleague Tracey
Jensen) than the dirty, unfeminine, cut-and-
thrust world of the male business tycoon. The
mumpreneur’s thrifty, no-nonsense desire to ‘do
her bit’ also raises the specter of a second
figure of abject femininity which has also
loomed large in the rhetoric of austerity: the
scrounging ‘Chav’ mum ( Tyler, 2008; Allen and
Osgood, 2009). While mumpreneurs are not greedy
or overtly materialistic, they are also
responsible, self-sufficient individuals whose
response to either economic or personal
catastrophe (eg redundancy, caring for a
disabled child) is to find ingenious ways to
provide for their families rather than relying
state handouts.
Conclusion: The Myth of the Mumpreneur.
I just want to begin drawing some final
conclusions which highlight why the mumpreneur
is an austerity culture myth (in the Roland
Barthes sense). It might seem obvious at this
point that the discursive construction of the
mumpreneur plays into both neo-traditionalist
views of gender and parenting and the ‘strivers
and skivers’ austerity rhetoric in which the
most disadvantaged members of society – such as
impoverished single mothers – are made
scapegoats for the excesses of neo-liberal
capitalism.
However, I want to end by raising a different
but equally salient objection to this term. If
the ideological imperative behind the
endorsement of entrepreneurship is one of
growth, providing employment and trickle down
wealth creation, the very small scale of these
business and their heavy reliance on promoting
themselves in relation to the particular life
stage and interests of the mother/founder,
precludes this. Ironically, it could be argued
that far from creating jobs, through the stated
advantage of ‘flexible working’ in terms of
combining work and childcare, small scale
mumpreneurs are reducing the need for
childminders and nannies that these women might
otherwise have employed. To conclude, unlike the
more successful founders of start-up business,
who are often male entrepreneurs and working
within the booming tech-sector, Mumpreneurs are
relatively privileged mothers who are finding
ways to remain economically active while they
cope with the onerous task of raising children
in neo-liberal culture. While the terms such as
‘pin-money’ are banished from these life-
affirming stories of female achievement, it is
highly misleading to describe them as
entrepreneurs in the traditional and the
discourse which surrounds them is no less
patronizing or reductive.
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