Good practice: Being self-employed as a mother

Elke Maria Alberts runs the Office for Social Architecture in Bielefeld. In 2014, she was named a role model entrepreneur by the "FRAUEN unternehmen" initiative and in this role has set herself the goal of encouraging women to become self-employed. In this interview, she talks about how she combines work and private life.

Mrs. Alberts, why did you decide to become self-employed?

For me, this decision had something to do with my basic attitude to life. I had a feeling about it. I was always sure that I wanted to go down the path of self-employment. Anyone who starts studying architecture is usually heading towards this goal right from the start. From my point of view at the time, there were only two options: self-employment or employment in an office. Experience later showed that there is more in between.

In your opinion, what are the main advantages of self-employment?

The biggest advantage is that you have maximum freedom to shape your own life. If you decide to become self-employed, you decide to take your life completely into your own hands.

How does this affect the work-life balance?

A big advantage is that I can organize my time more freely. Today, for example, I was able to have breakfast with my children until 9 a.m. because it's the vacations. I can also get involved in school in the mornings. On the other hand, I may have to attend important appointments spontaneously and can't fulfill my children's desired appointments, even though I promised to do so the day before. As the sole boss, I also didn't take months of parental leave after my children were born, as I still had responsibility for my employees. They still had to be paid and, in addition to managing the business, I also needed to provide services and invoice my clients for them. However, as soon as you earn an operating income, you no longer receive parental allowance. The only solution was to simply take the child into the office with me. Self-employment also means that you can't always make your private life more flexible or even "carve out" more time for it. But here, too, it depends on your personal attitude: If I want to be self-employed and have a family, then I just have to juggle everything.

What helps you with this?

My independence with children only works because I have an absolutely equal partner. The care work is more on his shoulders than mine. We coordinate a lot and divide things up well. During the lockdown, for example, we did a flying change every day: I was at home until 3 p.m., then he took over and I worked until late at night.

In your case, being self-employed also means being responsible for employees. How do you enable your team to reconcile work and family life?

I have eight employees, two of whom are mothers. Basically, I give them the same rights as I do. If necessary, the children can come into the office with me. Flexible working hours are also a matter of course for us. We had a long discussion together about whether we wanted core working hours and decided that everyone should be available between 10:00 and 15:00. But this is also negotiable if there is something against it in individual cases.

I also had to get used to a lot of things. I come from a generation where architects worked more or less around the clock. But the world simply works differently today. Employees make different life choices, place other interests on an equal footing with their professional ones and have new ideas about working hours. I am constantly learning new things.

What advice would you give to other women who are thinking about self-employment?

I always try to convey to young women that self-employment is also possible with a family life. My message: If you see self-employment as your path, then go down that path and don't let uncertain thoughts about future family planning influence you. It's about how you want to shape your life. If you go your own way, you'll see how it works out. And it works!

This interview was conducted with Elke Maria Alberts in 2021.