These questions were at the heart of a recent exchange within the S-EEEMERGING Community, where artists came together to share lived experiences, doubts, strategies, and frustrations around parenting and gender equality in the early music sector.
Rather than aiming for conclusions, the session opened a space for honest dialogue, one that many participants described as long overdue!
Different starting points, shared concerns
Some participants joined the conversation as parents, others as future parents, and others with a broader interest in gender equality and working conditions. Despite these different starting points, a common feeling quickly emerged: parenthood remains largely invisible in professional musical life.
For many musicians, becoming a parent directly affects access to work, touring possibilities, and long-term career sustainability. Several participants described the fear of “disappearing” professionally after taking time off, especially in a sector where visibility and continuity are key.
Different country, different experience
The first issue raised during the discussion was the unequal access to social protection for musicians working across borders.
One singer shared her experience of working regularly with an orchestra in the Netherlands while officially based in Portugal. When she had to stop working due to pregnancy and childcare responsibilities, she found herself without access to adequate support in either country: not eligible for aid where she worked, and insufficiently covered where she lived.
This kind of situation highlights a structural imbalance affecting many musicians in Europe, whose international careers often fall between national systems of social protection.
The unequal weight of parenthood
Gender inequality appeared repeatedly throughout the discussion. While parenthood affects all musicians, its impact is not distributed equally.
Participants highlighted how motherhood is often associated with assumptions of reduced availability or commitment, while fatherhood is rarely questioned in the same way. A male artist from the Community even mentioned feeling guilty that his wife, also a musician, has a different career since the birth of their child, especially because of breastfeeding. On the other hand, his work life only changed because he wants it to, it wasn’t inevitable, or expected of him professionally.
Pregnancy, recovery, and early childcare create unavoidable pauses that are still poorly anticipated by ensembles, presenters, and production structures. Even when support exists, it often depends on individual goodwill rather than systemic measures.
Touring & logistics: the most challenging part
Touring, central to many early music careers, was identified as one of the most challenging aspects of combining music and family life. Travel duration, rehearsal schedules, and the absence of childcare solutions on tour make participation difficult, particularly for musicians with very young children.
Some participants shared strategies that had helped in specific situations: adapting tour formats, sharing childcare responsibilities within ensembles, or negotiating conditions directly with presenters.
The group stressed that care work is still largely invisible in project design, budgets, and funding criteria, despite being a determining factor for who can participate.
Making parenthood visible
One strong idea emerged from the exchange: visibility matters.
Several participants underlined the importance of speaking openly about parenthood with presenters, festivals, and partners – not as a limitation, but as a reality that needs to be integrated into professional planning.
Visibility also means representation: seeing musicians who are parents (especially mothers) continuing their careers sends a powerful signal to younger artists and helps challenge persistent stereotypes. We saw some women in the S-EEE Community feeling inspired and relieved hearing about the experience from mothers who are still very much active professionally.
A collective responsibility
The conversation made clear that parenting and gender equality are not “private issues”. They concern the entire ecosystem: ensembles, festivals, venues, funders, and networks.
Supporting parenthood in music is not only about individual accommodations, it is about rethinking how projects are conceived, how time and resources are allocated, and what values guide artistic production.
Opening the way forward
This session highlighted the need for continued dialogue, shared responsibility, and experimentation.
By creating a space where experiences could be shared without judgement, we wanted to reaffirm the importance of collective reflection on sustainability, understood not only in environmental terms, but also in social and human ones.
These conversations will continue, as part of an ongoing effort to imagine a musical sector where artistic ambition and personal life are not mutually exclusive!
If you would like to share a testimony, propose a solution, ask a question, or simply react to the issues raised here, we warmly invite you to get in touch:
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by email: community-manager@eeemerging.eu
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or by leaving a comment or sending us a DM on EEEMERGING’s social media channels.