Written by Fanny Di Domenicantonio, Director, Fox & Cubs Nanny & Private Staff Agency.
Working mother delegation is one of the most powerful and most underused tools available to mothers who are building a business while raising a family. The flexible hours, the freedom of running your own business, the ability to be present for your children while building something meaningful. And then there is the version that actually exists.
In the first episode of Her Second Draft, host Carole sits down with Fanny Di Domenicantonio, Founder and Director of Fox & Cubs, to have the honest conversation about what scaling a business while raising three children actually looks like and what it took to get there.
Working Mother Delegation: Why the Most Successful Mothers Outsource Strategically
Six years ago, Fanny walked away from a career in M&A finance and took a bet on a different kind of life. She acquired what was then a small, specialist nanny agency and began building it into what Fox & Cubs is today, one of the UK’s most respected childcare and private staffing agencies, recognised in 2026 as Best Nanny Agency in the UK at the UK Nanny Awards and Best Small Recruitment Business at the Global Recruiter UK Industry Awards.
The decision was not linear. It rarely is. But what drove it was a clear-eyed understanding that the life she was building professionally needed to align with the life she was building personally as a mother of three, as someone who understood intimately what families need when they are trying to do too much with too little support.
That personal understanding is what makes Fox & Cubs different. It is not just a business. It is built on lived experience of the problem it solves.
The illusion of flexible entrepreneurship
One of the most honest moments in the conversation is Fanny’s dismantling of the entrepreneurship myth. The idea that owning your own business means freedom, flexibility, and the ability to be everywhere at once. The reality, as anyone who has built something from the ground up will recognise, is quite different.
Entrepreneurship is hard work. It is constant. It requires the kind of presence and decision-making that does not switch off at school pickup. The freedom, when it comes, is earned slowly and deliberately not granted automatically by the act of going out on your own.
What Fanny has found is that the key is not working less. It is working more intentionally, and protecting the time that matters most by being ruthless about everything else.
The hourly rate framework: delegating without guilt
One of the most practical frameworks Fanny shares in the episode is her approach to evaluating household tasks against her business hourly rate.
The principle is simple: if a task would cost less to outsource than the value of the hour you would spend doing it yourself, delegate it. Not as a luxury. As a rational business decision that also happens to protect your family time.
This is something Fanny lives by and something she sees reflected in the families Fox & Cubs works with every day. The most settled, high-functioning households are not the ones where parents do everything themselves. They are the ones where the right professionals are in place, handling the tasks that do not require a parent’s specific presence, so that the time parents do spend with their children is genuinely present, genuinely meaningful, and not depleted by exhaustion.
A live-in nanny, a nanny housekeeper, or a maternity nurse is not outsourcing love. It is outsourcing logistics so that love has the space to actually show up.
Working mother delegation done well is not about doing less. It is about doing what only you can do, and trusting the right people with everything else.
The chest of drawers model
Fanny’s second framework, the chest of drawers model, is one of the most useful reframes for working mothers navigating competing priorities.
The idea is that your priorities do not have to be on the table all at once. Some things go in the drawer not abandoned, just set aside temporarily while something else takes the space it needs. A demanding work project, a child going through a difficult phase, a household in transition. Each gets its turn at the front. None of them has to fight for space simultaneously.
This model is a direct challenge to the idea of balance as a static state. Balance is not something you achieve and maintain. It is something you negotiate constantly, week by week, sometimes day by day. The chest of drawers model gives that negotiation a structure and removes the guilt that comes from feeling like you are failing at everything because you cannot do everything at once.
Childcare culture: UK vs France
One of the most interesting threads in the conversation is the difference Fanny has observed between childcare culture in the UK and France. In France, structured childcare from an early age is normalised, expected, and largely free of the guilt that can accompany it in the UK. In the UK, there is still a cultural tension between asking for help and being seen to be coping.
What Fanny has noticed in her work with families is that this tension is shifting. The families coming to Fox & Cubs today are less apologetic about needing support and more intentional about building it into their lives from the start. That is a positive change, and it reflects a broader recognition that the village model of raising children is not an indulgence. It is how families have always functioned well.
The mental load of working motherhood
The conversation does not shy away from the mental load, the invisible, constant cognitive labour of managing a household, anticipating needs, and holding the emotional weight of family life alongside a professional one.
What Fanny brings to this conversation that most do not is a practical answer. Not a call to do less or feel less, but a framework for thinking clearly about where your time and energy actually belong, and where a well-chosen professional can step in so that you can step back.
This is what Fox & Cubs exists to do. Not to replace the family, but to support it, so that the people at the centre of it can actually be present for each other.
Listen to the full episode
Her Second Draft is a podcast about the second chapters women write for themselves, the pivots, the reinventions, and the honest conversations nobody else is having.
Listen to Episode 1 on Spotify and follow Her Second Draft on Instagram @herseconddraftpod
About Fox & Cubs
Fox & Cubs Nanny & Private Staff Agency supports families in London and internationally with carefully vetted childcare and household professionals. With a personalised approach and deep understanding of family life, the agency helps households find reliable long-term support. In 2026, Fox & Cubs was voted Best Nanny Agency in the UK at the UK Nanny Awards, voted for by families, nannies, and childcare professionals.
Get in touch with the Fox & Cubs team today or connect with Fanny on LinkedIn.
