A former student recently contacted me to ask some advice about taking maternity leave as a freelancer; she is pregnant with her first baby and her new freelance business has recently been gaining momentum, so she wants to take time off but doesn’t want to lose all of the energy she’s put into her business. My daughter is entering middle school this year so my experience is a bit dated, but I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts as well. Whether you’re taking maternity or paternity leave, taking care of an aging parent or various other reasons, here are some factors to consider:
- As a freelancer, taking time off is always anxiety-provoking. Let’s just admit that and get it out of the way. Building up a financial cushion to tide you through the period when you’re not working; stressing out about whether clients will find another translator (who, in your paranoid fantasies, is always better, faster and cheaper than you); stressing out about how long is too long to take off, and on and on. That part, you just have to live with, and maybe do a lot of yoga and meditation to help calm the inevitable anxiety!
- I think it’s best to be up front about the reason for your leave. To me, it’s unnecessarily vague to contact your clients and say “I will be unavailable for the next six months” with no further explanation. If you’re taking a medical leave, I would not provide the details about your health problems; just say you’ll be on medical leave.
- But you want to keep it a little vague as well. When you have an in-house job, you have to be really, really ready to go back to work before you commit to a return date, because you have to feel up to working a full day, and you have to have child care in place. But as a freelancer, you have no paid leave time, so you don’t want to close the door for longer than you need to. For example you might say “I’m expecting a baby in mid-October and I plan to be on maternity leave until approximately the end of November, but my exact return date will of course depend on how the baby and I are doing by that point. I’ll plan to contact you by November 25 with an update” or “I will be working reduced hours for at least the next two months to care for my ailing father. I anticipate that it may take me longer than usual to respond to e-mails and phone calls and I will probably not be able to handle rush projects. But please let me know if I can help out with any non-rush work during that time.”
- How long you need to take off depends on a lot of factors that you can’t control. We’re talking about maternity leave here: I commented to my former student that although I felt completely fine within a few weeks of my daughter’s birth, her habit of wanting to be held and nursed for about 23 hours a day kind of precluded doing any substantive work. In addition, she didn’t sleep through the night until she was over a year old, so I was pretty exhausted a lot of the time. Other babies are the opposite: if your kid is happy napping in a crib for hours at a time, you might be working close to full-time within a few months.
- Be honest with yourself about your choices and tradeoffs. I’ll address this one from the mom/wife point of view because it’s the one I’m most familiar with. At some point during my daughter’s first years of life, I realized that for me, the work/life balance will always swing toward life rather than work. I realized that when my daughter is grown up, I will have gotten some things right, and I will have messed some things up, but mainly I want to have been there, and to have had not only quality time but quantity time with her. Same with my husband: if he’s really sick, I don’t go into the co-working office and I stay home with him; if he has to have some medical procedure, I go along.In a lot of ways we’re pretty traditional: we cook a real dinner and eat together pretty much every night. We mostly socialize as a family; my parents live near us so we basically never use babysitters even if we go out at night, and so on. I recognize that this choice involves tradeoffs. Essentially every moment of my day is scheduled, because I work primarily while my daughter is at school. I could make more money if I didn’t take a month off every summer to go on an extended family vacation; I turn down pretty much every out-of-town speaking engagement request that I receive, because my ATA Board responsibilities already require me to travel at least four times a year. In order to fund our travel habits, we practice freelance frugality to a pretty extreme extent. But I accept that this is the way of life that makes me happy, and that in order to maintain it, I have to prioritize.
On the other side of the coin, there are lots of moms who need to work full-time, either for financial reasons or because that’s what makes them happy. In a doctor’s office waiting room a while ago, I read an interview with Ivanka Trump in Redbook (I know, that’s not normally where you’d expect enlightenment to come from, but I take it where I can get it!), in which she unapologetically admitted that she spends just an hour and fifteen minutes with her toddler daughter on a typical weeknight because she works up to 16 hours a day. It goes without saying that if you’re Ivanka Trump, part of the reason you can do that is because an armada of nannies and housekeepers and cooks are picking up the slack during those 16 hours. However I really appreciated Ivanka’s candor: she seems to really adore her daughter, but also says that working hard at a job she loves makes her happy, and makes her a better mom when she’s with her kid. So I think it’s not so much a matter of saying “if you’re a mom and a freelancer, you must do this,” but of finding a quasi-balance that works for you.
Any other tips (practical or philosophical) on leaves of absence??
Of course it also depends whereabouts in the world you are. I took 6 months with my first son and 9 with the second, but that’s in the UK where there’s paid maternity allowance even for freelancers.
paid maternity allowance for freelancers in the UK? What a fantastic place to live!
I second that! Next you’ll tell us that you get health insurance too! But out of curiosity, where does the funding come from? From a fund that you pay into, or from the general tax fund?
Hi Corinne, Thank you for your thoughts. I could not believe it when I read it. I was actually looking for your contact details when you posted this article as I am in a similar situation to the initial freelancer who asked you for advice. I was wondering if other parent-freelancers can share tips to help a newbie freelancer with a little cute bundle to organize his time and make a balanced life.
Loved your article once again Corinne. Even though I don’t have any children, I know sooner or later we all need to take some extra time off for different reasons so I have often wondered what would I do about with my freelance work during those times. Thank you!
“Next you’ll tell us that you get health insurance too!”
They call that the NHS in the UK, Corinne. Like the system in Canada more or less, universal coverage funded by taxes. Despite a few creaks, it has done enormous good since it was established and serves the population well.
Indeed, and the Maternity Allowance comes out of the same pot, more or less. You have to have paid a certain number of weeks’ National Insurence in the year preceding the leave to be entitled to it.
Thanks Kevin! Yes, I was being tongue in cheek there (doesn’t come out too well in writing!); the US really is a backwater when it comes to benefits (namely, that freelancers get none, although we pay *extra* taxes to reward us for our entrepreneurial spirit)!
Freelancers in Québec (Canada) get a paid maternity allowance like in the UK. My baby is 4 month old, is still hungry every two hours and only power naps! I don’t know how I could possibly work in the moment. I decided to take the 9 months I am allowed to have (my partner is taking the rest), and I will assume the consequences… One of my client in the US did not seem to understand even though I explained how our system works and told her in the beginning I would take 6 to 9 months… She called me when my baby was 1 month to ask if I could work and I found it difficult to say no.
Great post! I also live in the UK and have a 3 months old daughter. Before having the child, I’ve been running my freelance translation business successfullly for 3.5 years which I found very helpful once the baby arrived. I can imagine it to be hard starting out and having a baby at the same time. Now, I mainly work in the evening and on weekends and focus on my daughter in the day. Needless to say that I work much less than before, but some sacrifices are unavoidable I guess. I’ve got to say though that I do not suffer from sleep deprivation at all, otherwise our meticulous type of profession would be hard to keep up for anyone!
Enjoyed your post Corinne! I started as a freelancer in 2008 and have had two children since then, I took 6 months maternity leave in 2009 and 9 months in 2011 (yep, I live in the UK too!). I was happy to work exclusively with agencies at the start, knowing that I wanted to have children and so was able to be very clear with them. I advised I would be taking e.g. 6 months off and would contact them on my return. Both times I was back translating within hours of announcing my return :-).
It is definitely a juggling act being a parent and freelance translator but I do enjoy spending more time with my children than other working mums can. I’ve definitely become a lot more efficient since having children as everything is scheduled as you say Corinne. I’ve also been more confident/strict about saying no to projects I can’t fit in or suggesting longer deadlines and on many occasions clients have come back to me with a revised deadline or alternative project.
Whatever your plans for your future work/life balance, my advice to any new parent would be to plan to spend the first few months entirely away from work. Aside from exhaustion and adjusting to the needs of your baby, on a personal level we had to make quite a few hospital trips with our second son in the first couple of months – children have a habit of throwing all carefully laid plans off course!
Corinne – Thank you so much for opening up this discussion to your great blog community! It’s wonderful and very helpful and reassuring to hear from others who have taken significant maternity leave and have been able to jump right back in when they decided they were ready. The UK situation of course sounds ideal! Alas…
With an impending maternity leave ahead, I have definitely felt all of the anxieties you mention, and have also been trying to focus in as much as I can on the advantages of freelancing in such situations. I have reminded myself that one of the main reasons I chose to pursue the freelancing path was the flexibility it would theoretically afford me in terms of spending time with family — both for fun times and in the event my help was needed. I feel fortunate, for example, to not have to think about childcare right away and to be able to decide for myself when I am ready and able to return to work.
Reading this post and all the comments so far reassure me that it is possible to be flexible about the time I will need/want to take off and to eventually continue working, too!
Corrine, you’ve struck the right cord with so many of us here! I was on maternity leave last year (UK again 🙂 )
I am still with my little one at home, and although I officially came back to work, I can translate only when my son takes a nap and in late evenings (sometimes very late).
I am more than happy that freelancing allows me to spend so much time with my child and to be his full-time mum while working at the same time. There are, however, days when I wish I could spend a whole day just working peacefully, without any disruptions. I am considering arranging some childcare for a day or two in a week, but when it comes to calling the nursery and registering him, I hesitate and think that I’ll stay with my son a wee bit longer…
Great post Corinne! And tough question for freelancers in the US with the financial aspect being potentially quite difficult to deal with. I live in France where we do get maternity leave but in my case, I was really and very sincerely so eager to work again… I actually had twins and I don’t know if it would have been the same with just one baby, but getting back to work made me really happier than the mental (and physical) exhaustion after a full day at home with two babies. And I love them so much, it’s just that I needed my brain to focus on other things in order to come back a “better mother”, to quote Ivanka Trump. I guess everyone is different 🙂
I’m so glad you wrote about this Corinne. It’s surprising how little this subject is talked about, considering how commonplace it must be for so many freelancers. But particularly for maternity/paternity leave, it’s such a personal decision.
My son is now 18 months’ old, so my experience of extended leave is quite recent. I found it very hard to know in advance how long I/we would need to take away from my business, but I adopted the approach of keeping clients regularly informed, and stating in advance that I expected to take around 3 months ‘off’. The shock of motherhood (my son arrived earlier than expected), the sleeplessness, and a baby who wanted to nurse around the clock, meant that I didn’t feel ready at 3 months. The fact that you can claim maternity allowance for up to 9 months really takes the pressure off, even if the amount itself is pretty low.
Although I was surprised at how much I yearned to get back to work just days after having Aaron, I also felt very much that I didn’t want our lives to be so much about work now, and that I also wanted to have the quantity of time with him that you refer to. I eventually felt it was time for him to start going to a childminder part-time at around 8/9 months, at which point I could really get back to business…having only done very weeny jobs around sleep times until that point. I have been fortunate in being able to gradually build up his childcare hours as my workload returned to normal (albeit 3 days a week now).
I knew that taking this length of time off would have consequences for my other ‘baby’, my business. I knew it would lose me a few clients here and there and mean a LOT less money for a while. But I have accepted this sacrifice as a temporary one, and to be honest, since returning to work I have found myself just as busy as before, or at least I could be if I wished to be. I also have many of the same clients as I did before. It definitely does help if you keep in touch with clients and/or provide contact details for trusted colleagues they could work with in your absence.
Another one of my favorite quotes on this topic is from Suzy Welch, who’s a well-known business journalist in the US. She got a lot of criticism for saying “there is no work/life balance, only work/life choices,” but actually I agree with her. No matter how much energy you have, you cannot be a full-time mom and a full-time translator, because you’ll either be terrible at both roles, or have some sort of emotional breakdown. But if you realize (like Ivanka!) that there are lots of ways to be a good parent, and that you get to choose the path that makes you feel most fulfilled, it can work.
This is such an interesting and appealing post!!! Congratulations Corinne for your thoughts, and thanks to all of your for sharing your opinions on this key point for any freelancer who is (or dream to be) a parent! I have two kids (a five-years-old boy and a two-years-old girl) and I have always come back to work around a month after they were born. It wasn’t easy, but I have always been able to deal with everything quite well. My husband and I share house cores and child care equally, and that’s a great thing for all working mums. Well, right now, I’m expecting my third baby and I know everything must be a little harder but I’m ready for the new adventure! 😉
Hi Corinne, interesting topic, definitely stroke a chord. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts as well; it is nice to know that a. you don’t have to decide before the baby is born and you find out what your baby and your dynamics together is going to be; and b) there are several approaches to managing work and family.
Thanks Corinne for your post! Always soo useful and real for many of us. For me it is really hard to find time to make it all well and ready to go. I agree with you that essentialy, it is a matter of choices. We choose every minute what to do and what to leave for a later moment. However, time passes by sooo fast, and babies and children grow up sooo fast as well, that we, as professionals as well as mothers, have to really think of this. We cannot go back in time, but we can make better choices from now on.
Thanks and happy week!
A great post! In Slovenia, we get a year of paid maternity leave (100 % of average salary from the year prior to the maternity leave – although this is about to change soon). If you are a freelancer, you get a certain amount during your maternity leave but it depends on the taxes and other fees you’ve been paying to the state. Since I opened by business a year before I had my second daughter, I was paying minimum taxes and fees so I received a very low maternity benefit. Basically I worked through the whole first year until my daughter started kindergarden – as a beginner, I didn’t earn enough to build a financial cushion prior to giving birth and of course, I didn’t want to lose clients since the business relationships I’ve managed to build thus far were so fragile at the time. And I have to say this – it was a TOUGH year! I spent time with the baby till about 3 pm when we went to pick up my older daughter from kindergarden, my husband was home at six, we had some family time, put the children to bed and I worked from about 9 pm to 3 or 4 am in the morning. I was extremely lucky that my second daughter slept really well when she was a baby, I wouldn’t have been able to do all that with a non-sleeping screaming baby, that’s for sure.
So in my experience, anything is doable but really, really exhausting 🙂 I’m the same as you, Corinne, I like to spend as much time with my kids as I can, they are growing up fast and I don’t want to miss their childhoods, I can be a workaholic later when they won’t need me as much as they do now (they’re six and three now).
It’s a constant balance and sometimes I get really frustrated about it, but this is what I love to do, I love to work at home, be independent.
Great post as always. Let’s not forget the power of being a freelancer is that we have the choice. We can choose when and where to work, and how much. I became a freelance translator after my second child was born and one of the main reasons I am a freelancer is to be able to be there for my children. To your student I just want to say that the work will be there when she decides to return, perhaps even better work than before, life is too short for compromising family time and it will all work out in the end.