Opinion
Work is a way to make money. Please, stop calling it your ‘baby’
Michelle Battersby
Company executiveYou’ve probably overheard it before or maybe someone’s said it to you directly: a business being referred to as a baby.
For as long as I can recall, I’ve squirmed when I’ve heard the comparison. And now that I’m eight months pregnant and about to be both a business owner and a parent, I’ve finally been able to put my finger on why.
Female business owners and founders often refer to their work as their “baby”.Credit: iStock
Let’s start by calling out the obvious: A business is not a baby. And there are a number of reasons a business shouldn’t feel like a baby, let alone be called one. The first being that allowing that level of emotional and personal connection into your day-to-day work will keep you from making the best decisions.
In business, you need to maintain reason and avoid being driven or influenced too heavily by emotion to stay on track, do what’s viable and what will put you in the best position. That often means putting feelings to the side and being guided by facts. I’m not saying a business can’t or shouldn’t have personal touches, but that should be kept for the business’s mission, which will drive you, clarify the vision, and gives the personal side to your motivation guardrails.
The second reason is that a baby is 100 per cent dependent on its parents. Your business should not be entirely dependent on you. Even in the early stages, if you’re unable to step away from your business for short periods of time or trust the capabilities of your team, you’ve not built a defensible or scalable business.
A baby is also a lifelong commitment, and one you can’t sell five or 10 years from now. But you should be able to at least consider doing that with a successful business, even if you plan to be its founder and owner for the entirety of your working career. Parenthood is a wildly different journey to what founders experience, not least because parenthood is selfless, and business is ultimately a money-making venture.
In saying all of this, I recognise that calling your business your baby isn’t always meant literally, but there can often be a lot behind it. For example, have you ever seen a man refer to their businesses as their babies or say something along the lines of, “I’m not having children right now because my business is my baby”?
We’re in a day and age where we’ve advanced past traditional gender roles. But using terms like this subtly reinforces outdated stereotypes that position women as primary caregivers and men as breadwinners. And beneath the surface of this phrase are often career-driven women who feel like they have to validate or justify why they are choosing to put so much time, effort, care and commitment into a business. It plays into the idea of women having to choose one or the other - career or baby.
I used to say things like, “I can’t have kids right now, my career is my No.1 priority”. In hindsight, I realise how condescending that statement is. It implies that if you have children, your career has taken a back seat, or you’re not as capable as you once were.
This entire conversation brings into question the language we use in the workplace at large, which is enforced from the top down. For example, referring to a team of employees as a “family” is a red flag. While it’s wonderful to see workplaces fostering a culture of collaboration, and colleagues who truly enjoy spending their time together, the very nature of family often means accepting others for who they are, regardless of damaging behaviour, because that’s unconditional love. But work is inherently a transactional agreement. So often, the companies that see themselves as “one big happy family” are the most toxic.
In today’s society, women face unprecedented pressure to choose between their careers and starting a family — for me, getting pregnant became the catalyst for examining from where these pressures originated.
Often, we can say things like “my career is my baby” without thinking twice. It can be tempting to add weight to what you’re working on as a way of signalling to others the significance your career, your business, or a specific project holds to you. Referring to something as your child, particularly as a woman, is a shorthand way of saying something is a noble cause and should be beyond their reproach.
If you’ve chosen not to have children (or if you are unable to), you may feel that the phrase is a subtle way of reminding you of what you’re missing out on. If you’ve chosen to have children, the phrase may make you feel that your experience as a working mother isn’t fully understood.
As always, the term is simply a reflection of larger issues at play when it comes to women navigating career and motherhood.
But instead of career versus baby, my career is my baby, or my team is my family, let’s redraw the boundaries clearly: Family is family, whatever its shape or size, and work is work.
Michelle Battersby is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Sunroom.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.