We need to talk about family, money, and freelancing. The inflationary bideneconomics milieu is birthing an entirely new class of worker.
That worker prioritizes flexibility over earning potential but is wholly unlike most self-employed, gig economy types in spirit. This worker craves stability. They did not jump from their cushy 9-5 to pursue some tech startup or to start some mental health crystal healing co-op in Costa Rica. No. They were pushed over the cliff into the 1099 life not by choice but by necessity.
I give you the mommalancer.
But before I get into it, let’s get some perspective.
The Economic Reality:
💲 The average cost of raising a child in 2023 is $20,813
👨🔬 The average income for a married 35-year-old man is $70,374
🏃♂️ The average household needs to make $11,400 more per year just to preserve their lifestyle
And here’s the kicker:
👨 👩 🐣 🐥 Most families with two kids have dual-income earners making 140k with an average of 1.8 earners per family
So. If you are married and unlucky enough not to be in the 1% of the world who earns 140k+..…………you need to have two income streams to make the family work in the US.
For the traditionally minded, who are the only ones even having kids right now, the childcare job goes to the wife.
That's not because we're bigoted. Taking 1-3 months off every couple of years for maternity leave makes being the primary breadwinner more challenging. That’s just reality.
But anyone whos done it knows that managing a household full of kids is a full-time job. Not only that, but kids get sick. They are not in school from 9-5 every day. They have vacations, they get out early, etc. Trad women who feel they need to pursue a full-time job either need unicorn grandparents, or they need to hire help. Let’s look at those two options.
The Grandparent Card
So you can work full time IF your grandparents are regularly helping. But great news! Pew's studied found that among U.S. grandparents who have helped with child care in the past 12 months, nearly three in four (72%) said they did so only occasionally. The grandparent card is not one most of us get to play.
The Math on Outsourcing
So should tradwives outsource? Grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning the house, hiring someone to pick up the kids and watch them till 6 pm….etc.
My friend at Techno-Canton did some simple math that shows this to be a losing move for anyone but top earners.
It’s simple:
The average salary is 60k.
After taxes, the hourly rate of a 60k salary is about $20/hour.
After taxes, the cost to a consumer of minimum wage ($15 an hour) time is $41.25 an hour.
The average person needs to work two hours to outsource one.
The choice is clear: sell a couple kids on the black market to lower your cost of living, or give up every free moment that you can find and work.
The Mommalancer
This has given rise to an entirely new type of stressed-out, work-life-balance-is-a-myth type of worker I’m calling the mommalancer.
Savvy, capable trad moms are looking for side hustles. They are trading higher pay rates and benefits for flexible, remote opportunities so that they can keep their kids from turning nonbinary at the hands of public school groomers. They are etsy shop makers, project managers, virtual assistants, makeup hawkers, event planners...etc.
This is both a great talent opportunity and a great business opportunity that virtually no one is taking advantage of.
As a matter of fact, if you are one of these mommalancers, send me your resume. I’m going to build a list and send you opportunities.
The Opportunity for Employers
Instead of going to freaking Upwork and hiring some pakistani muslim to help you with virtual assistant-type work, hire a trad mom mommalancer. She speaks your language, shares your values, and lives in your timezone!
I’ve seen groups of these women build million-dollar businesses. That is not a joke. I know multiple 1M+ operations that were founded and grown by these women.
My wife worked for one of these for the last four years.
The founder (a mommaprenure) gave these part-time women a stable monthly income, performance incentives, vacation, and paid maternity leave. Their turnover was 0% over four years, and they hustled hard for that business.
Could the business have hokeysticked higher with full-time hires? Could it have been 50M instead of 1M? Maybe, but this case study should stretch our minds to see what’s possible in nontraditional work arrangements. The tired Employee/Freelancer designation just doesn’t make sense for this new market, and those who can see and embrace that fact will win.
Now, let’s look at this category of workers as a business opportunity.
Here are a few ideas that could win.
A daycare where the moms switch off watching multiple kids at a time that has call booths.
A talent/temp agency dedicated to placing trad momma lancers with values-aligned work
A benefits company or department of an existing benefits company dedicated to serving these women.
Those are just the first three that come to mind.
Let’s grab those opportunities by the veil.
I’ll end by giving my wife a massive shout-out for living this lifestyle to make it work. Women who do this are saints in the making.
Innovative thinking.
I know some women who did an outsourced HR thing as a group of moms working out of their homes. We think of HR as commissars, but 95% of it is just paper shuffling for compliance purposes, which many businesses are more than happy to find someone to do. Its the new version of book-keeping, which is still probably the number one Mommalancer opportunity.
"Momlancing" is an interesting idea and I've seen firsthand how it can be the dealbreaker for a family that is struggling to keep things afloat, especially if the family is having children at a faster rate than the revenue increases.
I've also seen moms feel pressured to help the family make more money to keep the family "afloat" in a situation where "afloat" is...relative. "Afloat" is keeping the large, expensive house in an expensive area. It's eating out fairly often. It's traveling and spending pretty comfortably. I also think when mom is working it doesn't really offer much incentive for dad to expand his horizons and light the fire under his butt to start making more money. I say that as a dad who needs a fire under his butt.
As someone with a wife at home and 2 children, I don't understand how $140k is the requirement to have 2 children. Not criticizing, I just don't understand why that number is so high.
I know we don't live in a perfect world, but I'd like to see other solutions than adding another job to my wife's plate when she's already busy with tending to the kids, home and community.