The terms “mumpreneur” and “mummy blogger” are often used to describe women who’ve had children and, while juggling the responsibilities of being a stay-at-home mum, launched a blog or small business.
To me, these women saw a gap in the market. Like any entrepreneur, they saw an opportunity. These women possess entrepreneurial spirit and passion. No matter how busy they are with their children, these women find time to fulfil their desire to succeed in other areas of their daily lives.
As a proud mum myself, I too started my own business and now head up Australia’s largest blogging community, Nuffnang. I started my business from my dining table when my baby was born. Fortunately, I don’t get tagged as a mumprenuer. I get businesswoman.
Is it because I started a business with previous experience in my field? Is it because I started my business and didn’t mention my newborn son? Is it because I didn’t blog?
Perhaps it’s because I did it in private. It seems despite the growth of the Internet and living in today’s digital age, society still struggles to shed its traditional views of women expressing opinion. Why is it that we don’t respect small businesswomen talking about success and money and welcome them sharing their opinions outside the home?
Within the fast growing blogger community, non-parenting bloggers are simply called “bloggers”, so too are the males. The female bloggers who write about a range of topics, sometimes not even about parenting, are too often tagged as a “mummy blogger.”
These women designed a blog, practice writing, manage editorial calendars, often learn code and how to take compelling photographs. These women schedule their posts and make time to write, engage with their communities and sometimes hire staff to help. These women learn how to increase their following on social media, even better than many social media experts.
These women successfully cultivated their hobby into a profession, making considerable financial contributions to their households as a result of seeing an opportunity in the digital space. Yet, these entrepreneurs are called mummy bloggers.
In Nuffnang’s community of over 7500 bloggers, only 15% of bloggers are classified in the parenting vertical. The remaining 85% of bloggers are a diverse mix, passionately writing about life, interiors, food, travel, craft, technology and fashion.
The fact is, the blogosphere is diversified. The people who contribute as bloggers come from all walks of life, yet only the women with children get a label.
Deborah Alter-Rasche writes Learn with Play at Home and grapples with the stigma attached to the term “mummy blogger”.
“If we’re not going to single out dads as ‘daddy bloggers’ and childless as ‘childless bloggers’, being called a ‘mummy blogger’ screams inequality and lumping all these writers under the one umbrella feels somewhat degrading,” she said.
Alter-Rasche started blogging while on family leave to reconnect with the learning element she felt she was missing from her job as a primary school teacher. She felt disconnected from her profession and the daily communication with her peers and colleagues, so Learn with Play at Home was born.
Since she started her blog in 2012, Alter-Rasche has experienced solid and steady growth of readers and followers. She now has over 422,000 monthly views on her blog and over 82,000 social media fans.
To me, it sounds like Deborah is yet another smart, professional woman who wanted to start a family but missed her job, so she found a way to have both. Just like any entrepreneur, she saw an opportunity and she took it.
Below’s a list of Bloggerati members who are all entrepreneurs – with and without children – who’ve blogged their way to success:
- Interiors Addict
- Learning 4 Kids
- Pale Division
- Be a Fun Mum
- Melbourne Girl
- Esme and the Laneway
- Move Fuel Love
- The Home Journal
- Sesame Ellis
- My Poppet
- The House that A-M Built
- Chloe’s Addiction
- Vintage Current
- Inside Outside Style
- The Life Creative
- One Crafty Mumma
- Samelia’s Mum