YOU'D expect most women to choose poking their eyes with pins over working with their mothers - yet the number of families starting businesses together is on the up. We met one mother-and-daughter team who work together and play together.

CLAIRE York's mum has coerced her into running the London Marathon and regularly ropes her into humiliating herself for charity.

But Claire insists she's still the best business partner she could wish for.

The mum-and-daughter team run Rascals Childcare, Todmorden Road, Burnley, and are one of a growing number of families choosing to set up in business together.

"Working with my mother is great," said Claire, 33.

"Because we know each other so well we make a great team. The biggest down side is probably the same thing - she knows me so well she gets rattier with me than she would a staff member and, of course, I do the same to her."

The pair opened their first nursery in October 2001 after mum Heather Langridge, 52, decided to sell her clothing company in Southport.

"The estate agent asked me what I was going to do next," explained Heather.

"I told him my daughter had always wanted to run her own nursery school and he said Funny you should say that because I've just taken a nursery school on my books'.

"The rest, is history."

Now the pair have 280 children registered at nurseries in Southport and Burnley and plan to open a third nursery in East Lancashire this summer.

"It's nice to work with someone you're not frightened to confront or have to impress all the time," said Heather.

"There's no politics between us like there can be between work colleagues vying to be top dog. We can trust each other completely too, and we have a real laugh."

But working together isn't free from its problems.

"We do scrap," admits Heather. "She wants to spend money and I tell her she can't. I have to be very careful with the budgets.

"But it's not a case of me thinking what I say goes because I'm the mother, we're democratic and we vote on things with our three managers if we reach stalemate. Sometimes I'm out-voted and sometimes Claire is. It's the agreement we made and it's the only fair way to work."

Heather said the key to family harmony in business is respect for each other.

"We play to our strengths," she said: "I'm the organiser, good with computers, and Claire is very good with people and things like taking care of the rotas. She's also a lot more tolerant than me.

"Working together has definitely brought us closer and we'd both hate not to work with each other now.

"But we give each other space too, and we tend to have time apart at weekends."

Not all families who work together are so lucky.

Family therapist and business coach Dr Kathy J Marshack said many families concentrate so hard on the business they forget their personal relationship.

"Entrepreneurial families are starting businesses at a phenomenal rate," she writes on psychcentral.com.

"There are powerful incentives to do so. Not only are there terrific financial and ego rewards from self-employment, but there is great joy in working with the ones you love.

"But when the focus is so much on business success and financial profit the family can fail to keep tabs on the loving relationships that made the business partnership possible."

Claire agreed that mixing family life and work has the potential to ruin relationships.

"It's sometimes hard to put family life to one side and it does put pressure on you out of work.

"Be prepared for it to change your relationship.

"Luckily ours changed for the better," she said.