Counterpoint: Consultant and Parent

Some thoughts on how consulting makes being a parent easier

A few weeks ago I wrote about the particular ways independent consulting makes parenting harder. For me, it’s the zero-sum math of time, the guilt that belongs entirely to me when I have to choose between hanging out with my daugther or spending more time at the office, and the trickery of a life so full of good things that I didn’t notice the other good things that slipped away. That piece got more engagement than anything else I’ve published in the form of emails, texts, comments, new subscribers, and one especially thoughtful reply from a colleague who said, essentially:

I relate to a lot of this—but I disagree with the premise.

That colleague is Allison Ehrich Bernstein, a writer, editor, and strategist who helps mission-driven organizations communicate what they do better, from annual reports to message development to executive communications and more. Allison has also been one of the moving forces behind our community library, Working with Consultants: A Guide for Mission-Driven Organizations. She’s been a solo nonprofit consultant for nearly a decade, a parent for more than half of that, and she makes a compelling case that the flexibility and autonomy of this work aren’t just tolerable alongside parenting but might be what makes parenting manageable. I’ll let her take it from here.

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Allison’s Counterpoint

I’ve been a solo nonprofit consultant for nearly a decade and a parent for more than half of that, so Sam’s recent essay on the particular ways this line of work makes being a parent challenging obviously piqued my interest.

Honestly, I relate to a lot of his struggles—but I disagree with the premise. Parenting is challenging, but I have no idea how I’d be doing it as anything other than a nonprofit consultant.

As parents, partners, professionals, and people, we try to balance multihyphenate identities that we never really get to shut off. That’s difficult regardless of industry: I hear the same lament from friends with “real” jobs, whether they’re on site, remote, working shifts, never offline, or as flexible as I am. Even my own spouse, a college professor whose in-person day job is highly social and about as self-directed as it gets, agrees this shared challenge might be more about the acute realities of being a parent (especially of young kids) in a mission-driven career.

Our kids are recently five and almost two, so there’s a lot more journey ahead for my family. This season of life is a daily challenge, full stop. But so far, the consulting life has made parenting work for me, and self-employment is consistently a real saving grace in the harder moments.

Parenting is hard—so is nonprofit work.

That multihyphenate identity isn’t always easy to wear or balance, and its parenting elements are still something I wrestle with. It can never be said enough: Parenting is hard! My kids are the greatest, but they’re also young and need hands-on care. Every minute with them is a treasure, but so is my well-being. I definitely struggle with doing things purely for myself, outside of my household and client base—but consulting has allowed me to seek intentional balance, set boundaries, and make time and mental space for what I need as a person. That’s thanks to the built-in flexibility also but because I gladly wear a lot of professional hats, too.

I launched Allative Communications in 2017, well before having kids or even getting a dog. My previous job had been at a political consulting firm operating on a hybrid model before that was a “thing,” so I already knew how to work effectively for different clients from my kitchen. Owning every aspect of my business was a different animal, though—and one of many things I loved about that quickly became the freedom to both set my hours and use them meaningfully.

Working as a self-employed freelancer, I found no one was asking me for extra time, open-ended availability, or free deliverables. Those once-normal bad habits sapped my energy and bandwidth with no benefit, because I’m not an employee with a supervisor to impress, and my fee structures are usually flat-rate.

So I learned to execute my contracted scope of work—and then close my laptop.

Freelancing can make it manageable.

That substantial mindset shift has proven invaluable, especially following my first career working on campaigns. Being able to let go of what my colleague Shannon Parris calls “vocational awe” in favor of the inherent opportunities of self-employment was a particular lifeline after the churn of the 2016 election cycle and its aftermath. Fast-forward through a puppy, COVID lockdowns, several moves, and two pregnancies, and that lesson is still with me on a daily basis.

As long as my tasks get done, I have the sole and final say in how. If a client needs more, or faster, or sooner, I can usually deliver because my setup can absorb a lot of disruptions, which is in turn because I manage my own contracts, deadlines, and expectations. What’s more, personal time and household to-dos are simply part of my workday; that now includes much of the time-consuming infrastructure that comes with parenting young kids, like my daughter’s kindergarten applications or dealing with the county agency that manages my son’s physical therapy.

Being a working parent means tradeoffs, no question, but I disagree with Sam that it’s necessarily a zero-sum game. Freelancing lets me very purposefully fit my work into my life, not the other way around. That additive approach gets things done, at home and professionally, and just as importantly it preserves my peace.

It’s never perfect, and there’s never enough coffee, but mostly it works. True, I’ve needed to become more efficient with my workdays since becoming a parent, and my schedule is much more time-sensitive than it used to be. But I’m also able to choose a structure and adapt it, so if my kids need an early pickup from preschool, or if they wear the stuffing out of me in the course of bedtime such that exhaustion precludes my working on this essay at 9pm on a Wednesday, well, tomorrow can handle it.

The mission still matters.

It’s not only the autonomy that leaves me wondering how the heck anyone else manages both business and parenthood. I’m simply a better parent for doing this job, specifically.

My consulting work—and the ability to define exactly what that entails—keeps me challenged and curious. I can chase projects that interest me, learn from smart and experienced people, and maintain a day-to-day that is substantively dynamic and ever-growing, even in slower months. Most mornings, I’m genuinely excited to open my inbox or talk to someone new.

Plus, by and large, nonprofit people are great! I’m happy not being in-house, but it’s fun getting to consistently work with passionate people who know and care so much. I’ve been so lucky to find clients whose organizations live their values and whose people treat their vendors accordingly—hardly a given in any industry, including this one.

I was even jazzed to return twice from the maternity leave I designed for myself—in part because it meant that naps and feedings were someone else’s responsibility (thank you, daycare) and I could generally feel more human post-postpartum. But it was also wonderful both times to get to switch my adult brain on and be back in society. That little newborn bubble has its charms, but so does contributing to the world my kids will grow up in.

They get a better parent specifically because I’m not only their parent.

I should note that, like Sam, I’ve got a wonderful spouse who’s a deeply present co-parent and also has a very flexible job he loves, which supports my own ability to make choices. Andy is also a labor economist who among other things studies “gig” work and self-employment—our jointly filed taxes with my 1099s are somewhere in the data he’s published with—so he understands how I work better than most. Even so, we’ve each got our own careers and work to do, and as parents we’ve had to find balance and revise our identities, individually and together.

Self-employment supports self-care.

I do agree with Sam about “what consulting gets right”—although that balance was absolutely something that appealed to me before I had kids. I’ve always loved not being beholden to a specific employer or boxed into a single function, as well as getting to vary what my work looks like with every project and over time.

And like Sam, I am “still at it” and glad he started this conversation to begin naming the very real challenges that arise even amid “so much good.” Working solo and remotely can be isolating, and I’m as guilty as anyone of reflexively checking my phone in between rounds of finding Waldo. Therapy has helped me, too, as well as building peer communities in person and virtually. I continue to find a lot of solace in knowing others are just trying to figure it all out along the way.

I also stay inspired by contributing to missions that I truly believe make the world I’m raising my children in a little better. That would hopefully still be true had I stayed in politics or worked in-house. But the diversity of causes I’ve contributed to as a consultant—from equitable urban planning to workers’ rights to land conservation—feels meaningful. I believe it is, and that it’s just as important as bringing up kids who agree.

As with almost any parent working from a home office, my kids have each joined their share of Zoom calls, and there will surely be more. They regularly get asked to wait while I respond to emails, and I’ve had more than one work-related epiphany while lying on the floor with plastic dinosaurs in hand. But those kids are thriving, and so is my consultancy—even when I put my phone down. Getting to choose and control and define the latter makes my life sustainable in the most fulfilling way I can imagine.

So, for me, working as a nonprofit consultant may actually be one of the easiest parts of parenting. Explaining my work to a preschooler? That’s another story.