From: www.bizjournals.com

Here’s a good Mother’s Day gift: A different kind of work week. Subsidies for child care. Counseling and support to help working mom entrepreneurs manage a work/life balance.

That’s just some recommendations from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundationto eliminate the “double whammy” facing working mothers who want to grow businesses while raising a family.

The new “ Labor After Labor” report urges lawmakers, companies and organizations that help people build businesses to reconsider the traditional work week, harness the growing trend of independent work to promote work/life balance and even subsidize child care and part-time employment.

How could upending the traditional work week help working mothers? In European nations, the work week can be as little as 29 hours; 86 percent of Dutch mothers work 34 hours a week, according to the report. And satisfaction with work/life balance is high.

Other recommendations include:

• Research into the effects of the growing gig economy on working mothers
• Logistical considerations for working moms from organizations that encourage entrepreneurship; it could be as simple as offering child care during meetings.
• Creating an atmosphere that allows women to benefit from motherhood as men benefit from fatherhood. A 2014 study shows that men’s incomes increase by an average of 6 percent when they have children, but women’s incomes decrease by an average of 4 percent.

This is the first of several reports from the Kansas City-based foundation that will explore entrepreneurship and motherhood.