Parenthood and Entrepreneurship: A New Research Agenda

Why Parenthood Matters for Entrepreneurship

According to the 2021 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, nearly half of early-stage entrepreneurs globally are raising children (GEM, 2022). These parent-entrepreneurs navigate a unique landscape where the demands of child-rearing directly intersect with the pressures of business creation and survival–at the individual, family, business, and societal levels. The quest for work-family balance draws many entrepreneurs. Yet entrepreneurship often intensifies the work-family conflict it was meant to resolve (Eddleston & Powell, 2012), affecting both business performance and personal well-being. Motherhood and fatherhood thus play a critical yet underexplored role in shaping entrepreneurial motivations, practices, and outcomes. Understanding these dynamics is vital for entrepreneurial practice: it can inform the design of more effective support systems and guide policymakers in creating inclusive ecosystems that recognise the dual roles many founders play.

Addressing these dynamics requires looking beyond the individual entrepreneur to the broader social fabric in which parenthood and entrepreneurship are simultaneously enacted. Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognised as a socially embedded activity, shaped not only by market forces but also by identities, family roles, and regional contexts (García & Welter, 2013; Wigren-Kristoferson et al., 2022). Despite the prevalence of parenthood among entrepreneurs, scholarly exploration of its various forms and their impact on entrepreneurial life remains limited. While a growing body of research examines the relationship between motherhood and entrepreneurship (e.g., Duberley & Carrigan, 2013; Lewis et al., 2022; Markowska et al., 2025), topics such as fatherhood, household dynamics, single parenthood, LGBTQ+ parenting, and the intersection of parenthood with diverse regional contexts remain largely uncharted.

This special issue welcomes both explanatory and causal research (examining drivers, outcomes, and resource endowments) and interpretive and social constructivist research (exploring narratives, identities, and discourses) on the relationship between parenthood and entrepreneurship. We believe these traditions jointly advance understanding of how parenthood shapes, and is shaped by, entrepreneurial activity, and that neither quantitative nor qualitative approaches alone are sufficient to capture the full complexity of this intersection. Contributions may draw on qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, or conceptual approaches, and we particularly welcome longitudinal, comparative, and multilevel designs that are sensitive to how parental roles and regional contexts vary across time and place. Here, we outline some of the underexplored areas in parenthood and entrepreneurship.   

Parental Roles and Identities

Motherhood and Entrepreneurship. Research on motherhood and entrepreneurship has generated important insights into how women negotiate parental and professional identities. Concepts such as the ‘mumpreneur’ (Ekinsmyth, 2011; Lewis et al., 2022) and motherhood as a springboard for entrepreneurial action (Markowska, 2018) have enriched our understanding. However, much of this work concentrates on a relatively narrow set of themes: principally work-family balance among entrepreneurial mothers in Western contexts. Equally, as new entrepreneurial forms emerge in digital spaces, such as ‘tradwives’ and female influencers, theories of entrepreneurial motherhood must be reaffirmed or redeveloped (Banet-Weiser and Reinis 2026). We welcome studies that break new theoretical, contextual, or methodological ground in this area, moving beyond established findings to examine, for instance, how motherhood intersects with gender, race, class, disability, or migration status in shaping entrepreneurial trajectories.

Fatherhood and Entrepreneurship. Fathers constitute half of all parents yet remain a surprisingly rare subject of investigation within entrepreneurship studies. While entrepreneurial fathers are known to enact various forms of ‘entrepreneurial masculinity’ just as mothers also do in relation to hegemonic masculinity typical for the Western social representation of entrepreneurs (Hamilton, 2013; Hytti et al., 2024), the field has given little attention to how emerging models of ‘involved fatherhood’ (Jennings & Tonoyan, 2022) reshape men’s personal and professional priorities. The nascent concept of the ‘dadpreneur’ (Tao & Essers, 2024) hints at new configurations of paternal and entrepreneurial identity, while cultural representations in television and popular film offer rich material for examining entrepreneurial father figures and evolving masculinities (Green & Wraight, 2025). We invite contributions that explore how fatherhood shapes entrepreneurial masculinity, how non-normative masculinities find expression in entrepreneurial settings, and how care-oriented models of masculinity (Nelson, 2016) influence venture decisions.

Underexplored and Emerging Forms of Parenthood. Several family forms have received little or no attention from entrepreneurship scholars. Single-parent entrepreneurs (Attrash-Najjar et al., 2024) face distinct resource constraints and identity negotiations. Lesbian, gay, and queer parents navigating entrepreneurship encounter unique relational dynamics (Wang, 2025), while non-traditional household arrangements such as polyamorous parenting raise novel questions about how familial configurations interact with venture creation. Future studies could also consider family diversity, e.g. entrepreneuring mothers/fathers in families with children with additional needs (Casteleijn-Osorno, 2025) or other dependents requiring care. This special issue welcomes contributions that illuminate these underexplored configurations and their implications for entrepreneurial identity, motivation, and practice.

Household Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission

The dynamics between parents and between parents and children deserve further study. A partner’s self-employment status influences the decision to become self-employed (Aidis & Wetzels, 2007), and household egalitarianism positively affects mothers’ entrepreneurial entry (Naldi et al., 2021). Fathers, too, can be drawn into entrepreneurship by a spouse’s business activity, and parental entrepreneurs shape children’s career orientations (Lindquist et al., 2015). We invite research that examines the relational and negotiated nature of entrepreneurial decisions within households.

The impact of parenthood extends to the “silent stakeholders” of the entrepreneurial journey: the children. While existing literature touches on family business succession, there is a pressing need to examine how entrepreneurial propensity and behaviours are transmitted across generations outside the traditional family firm context (Vladasel et al., 2023; Clinton et al., 2021). Important questions remain about which specific resources, such as financial capital, self-efficacy, risk profiles, social capital, and family-to-business enrichment (Powell & Eddleston, 2013), are passed from entrepreneurial parents to their children. Yet entrepreneurial households are not merely channels of resource transmission; they are also sites of socialization and relational dynamics. For instance, interparental interaction patterns and parenting styles can shape children’s perceptions of entrepreneurship as a desirable life path and influence children’s traits closely linked to entrepreneurial behavior. Therefore, we also invite studies that go beyond transmission to explore children’s lived experiences, identity formation, and well-being within entrepreneurial households, and explore how the development of a child in such a household is situated in complex systems where macro-level factors (national culture, welfare policies) filter through meso-level contexts (industry norms) to shape micro-level family dynamics and child outcomes (Welter, 2011).

Policy, Welfare Regimes, and Regional Contexts

Parenthood is a socially and culturally constructed experience shaped significantly by institutional frameworks. The entrepreneurial pathways of parents are heavily influenced by national and regional welfare-state policies, particularly those governing parental leave and affordable childcare. In liberal market economies such as the United States, where state-subsidised childcare is limited, many parents, especially mothers, are pushed into necessity-driven entrepreneurship as a strategy for creating flexibility (Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Brush et al., 2009). In social-democratic welfare states such as those in Scandinavia, comprehensive benefits tied to full-time employment can create high opportunity costs for starting a business, yet generous paid parental leave can simultaneously serve as a crucial incubation period for venture development (Markowska et al., 2023). In many developing countries, where formal state support may be weak, extended family networks providing childcare become a critical determinant of a parent’s ability to pursue entrepreneurial activities (Jamali, 2009). We therefore encourage comparative and context-sensitive research that examines how prevailing policy regimes, cultural norms, and regional ecosystems support or constrain parent-entrepreneurs in different settings.

Theoretical Perspectives

While the special issue remains theoretically open, we particularly welcome contributions drawing on one or more of the following lenses:

• Gender and Care: How do gendered expectations around caregiving shape access to entrepreneurial resources, legitimacy, and identity? Relevant frameworks include role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002), which illuminates the tension between communal expectations of parenthood and the agentic demands of entrepreneurship, and stereotype threat theory (Gupta et al., 2008; 2009), which helps explain how awareness of gender-based stereotypes can suppress entrepreneurial confidence and performance among both mothers and fathers. Moving beyond these classical gender theories, more recent doing gender theorizing and approaches invites scholars to novel understandings of how doing gender and enacting multiple masculinities and femininities might affect both men and women entrepreneurs, as well as their ventures and households.

• Embeddedness and Context: How do regional ecosystems, welfare regimes, and institutional environments mediate the relationship between parenthood and entrepreneurship? Contributions may draw on the family embeddedness perspective (Aldrich & Cliff, 2003), which positions the household as a critical unit shaping entrepreneurial resource mobilisation, as well as institutional theory (North, 1990; Scott, 1995) to examine how formal and informal rules govern the compatibility of parenting and venture creation across contexts. Stigma theory (Goffman, 1963) may also prove insightful in understanding how certain parental identities, including single parenthood, LGBTQ+ parenting, and other non-normative family structures, shape entrepreneurial legitimacy and identity management, as LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs in particular must navigate the compounding challenges of stigmatised identities across both family and business domains (Essers et al., 2023).

• Identity and Discourse: How do parent-entrepreneurs construct, negotiate, and communicate their identities? Useful lenses here include entrepreneurial identity (Radu-Lefebvre et al., 2021), social identity theory (Fauchart & Gruber, 2011), sensemaking frameworks (Weick, 1995), and family systems theory (Bowen, 1978), which together offer tools for examining how entrepreneurs integrate — or struggle to integrate — parental and entrepreneurial roles into a coherent self-concept.

Topics of Interest

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers addressing the following themes (not limited to):

Parental Roles and Identities

• How do parent-entrepreneurs negotiate entrepreneurial and parental identities across gender, culture, and sexuality?
• How do emerging models of fatherhood/motherhood shape entrepreneurship?
• What role does founder identity transformation play in the transition to entrepreneurial parenthood?
• How do single parents, LGBTQ+ parents, and individuals in non-normative family forms experience entrepreneurial entry and growth?
• How is role conflict or role enrichment experienced differently by mothers and fathers in entrepreneurial families?

Household Dynamics and Intergenerational Transmission

• How do partner dynamics and household egalitarianism shape entrepreneurial decisions?
• What specific resources (cognitive, financial, human, social capital) are transmitted from entrepreneurial parents to children?
• What are the lived experiences and well-being outcomes of children growing up in entrepreneurial households?
• How do macro-level factors (e.g., economic instability, policy frameworks) interact with household dynamics to influence children’s outcomes and orientations?
• In what ways do interparental interactions and household role negotiations shape children's perception of entrepreneurship?
• How do entrepreneurial households balance opportunity creation with potential stress or instability for children?

Policy, Welfare Regimes, and Regional Contexts

• How do regional policies, parental leave systems, and childcare infrastructure shape entrepreneurial entry, continuation, and exit among parents?
• How do parent-entrepreneurs’ experiences differ across welfare regimes (liberal, social-democratic, conservative, developing-country contexts)?
• What role do informal institutions and extended family networks play in enabling or constraining parental entrepreneurship

Narratives, Representations, and Discourse

• How does the portrayal of parent-entrepreneurs in media, public discourse, and cultural narratives affect entrepreneurial motives and sources of satisfaction?
• How does the self-representation and identity work of parent-entrepreneurs on social media and in entrepreneurial communities contribute to their business success and well-being?
• How do discursive ideals of ‘good motherhood’ or ‘involved fatherhood’ constrain or enable entrepreneurial action?

Outcomes and Impacts

• What are the longitudinal effects of entrepreneurship on family well-being, and vice versa?
• How does parenthood influence innovation, creativity, or business performance?

• How do entrepreneurial career trajectories differ based on family status, parenting roles, and the timing of parenthood relative to venture creation?