“Two-career couples have the assumption going into having a family, ‘Of course this is equal co-parenting. It’s 2019. What else would we do?’ But it so rarely plays out that way.” Despite the hope for equal partnership, it’s often mothers who are still doing the lion’s share of the unpaid, invisible labor of managing children and the home. Why is this?
Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother, but when it was finally the perfect time for conceiving, it turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages and her eventual successful pregnancy was plagued by health issues and led to a dramatic near-death experience during labor and delivery. She chronicled this experience and more in the book that she recently wrote called “Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos.” The book is funny and terrifying and informative and useful and real and raw, just like our conversation with Lucy today.
To be a working parent is to constantly feel like you’re missing out on one piece of your life: your work or your family. Or is it? Playfully co-founder Sonia Chang created a company with another mother and intentionally changed their workdays away from the normal 9-5 to be present with her children throughout the week while simultaneously pursuing a highly ambitious business plan for their startup.
What happens when someone who has always known that they wanted to be a mother—that they were born to be a to mother—has a deeply traumatic birth? How does it impact how she views herself, her child, and processes her new role as mother? For Kari Azuma this led to postpartum depression and “a full blown identity crisis.”