Homeschool mum hustle culture is giving MLM vibes

Or, we need to talk about childcare and money

At the moment whenever I open up Instagram, someone or other is posting about living their best homeschool mum, business owner life, making shed loads of money while giving their family the gift of day-to-day freedom.

I have to say it all feels pretty boss babe / mumpreneur / MLM vibes - even when they don’t appear to be trying to sell something to me. They often are, though.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Sometimes there’s a bid for relatability or camaraderie, asking followers: “How do you balance work, home educating, looking after the home, [insert ten other things that can’t possibly all fit together in a human day] all at once?”

And I just want to say, “You don’t!” It seems wild to me that this is a thing getting normalised on social media, working AT THE SAME TIME as looking after your children. Did we learn nothing from the pandemic?!

Tapping away at the computer to meet deadlines and taking video call meetings while kids run around you, pop in needing things or spend all day on screens isn’t sustainable.

I know people do manage to fit work in around their kids. I know I used to - ish. I had my first child at 25 and had a good few years of working late into the night, mostly on copywriting and content marketing. By the time I fell pregnant with my third baby at 30, though, it was game over for that work pattern and I knew I had to find some childcare.

Realistically, I never made a huge amount of money that way anyway. Just enough to plug a few gaps. I’m wary of the claims around making a lot of money while working around kids at home. What are we talking? Enough for groceries and kids’ activities or are we thinking home repairs, emergency savings and pension?

All this homeschool, self-employed “live your dream” stuff feels a bit hustle culture except now it’s being served up with lashings of “sisterhood” and “sacred rest”.

Most of us need childcare in order to work - both in terms of sustainability and being able to make significant earnings. This is one of the things missing from these home educating mum boss babe-esque posts. Not talking about childcare comes across as either a lack of transparency or an invitation to the cult of being incredibly busy.

By leaving childcare out of the conversation we’re not acknowledging what’s hard about the very alternative choice to home educate - that it involves financial sacrifice for most of us.

We’re also not talking about the challenges around childcare itself. Some work around their partners, possibly get help from grandparents, swap with friends or pay for childcare and all these options involve issues that need to be navigated. Perhaps you’ll have less family time, find that childcare isn’t reliable or have a big bite taken out of what you’re earning.

Too often home education brings women back into the home in ways that they didn’t intend and not always by choice. While the UK government is talking about cracking down on home education, we need them to properly fund and fix collective education so we’re not having to choose between our careers and our children’s wellbeing.

I’m just concerned that by not talking about childcare, we’re mum bossing our way past important issues and leaving a whole load of people feeling unseen. And I can understand why. Talking about sacrifices and lack of support is messy.