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12 Books for Your Little One, Featuring Women and Diverse Characters

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As a soon-to-be-parent in the height of the #MeToo movement, I worry about how to cultivate in my child a way of viewing the world that is kind, compassionate and curious. It feels more urgent and important than ever for me to introduce important concepts to my child. While I don’t get to choose to have my first child be born under the first female president, but I do get to choose what topics, ideas, and characters he or she is exposed to at this tender and influential time. These books are meant to inspire all children, to teach lessons like: to never give up; to fight for what you believe in; that genius exists in all races, ages, and gender identities; to ignore those who will doubt or shame you; to believe in yourself and to lift up those around you.

When My Husband Took My Last Name

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I felt the way about changing my name the way some people feel about having kids: I didn’t feel too strongly about keeping or changing my name, and hadn’t yet decided what I wanted. To be honest, by the time I was 30 and in a partnership, changing my name felt like a lot of work, especially in a digital age with internet footprints. People already knew me. But then the question of kids came up, and we agreed we didn’t want hyphens. And we wanted to share the same last name. “I want to take your last name,” he said. I’ll admit one of my first thoughts was: “Are you sure?”

9 Children’s Books to Help You Talk To Your Kids About Emotions

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I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of three year olds in my life right now. These sweet, coordinated, hilarious, opinionated little ones blow me away with their personalities, storytelling, and ability to recall exactly what their parents (or potty-mouthed aunties say). But the biggest surprise for me has been just how big the feelings are inside of these small bodies. I don’t mean that as a euphemism for drama or poor behavior, it’s truly that these sweet kids have such big experiences and are working through how to express themselves and process these feelings. For adults and kids of all ages, it can be helpful to hear stories and to know we’re together in this work of being human. Here are nine children’s books to serve as a jumping off points for parents to talk to their little ones about different emotions, what they feel like, and how to process and experience them.

Core Value #7 | You Don’t Have to Do Things the Way They’ve Always Been Done

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You don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done. And startups are one of the best places to imagine new futures. It’s okay to break things, to rebuild things, and to do things differently than the way that they’ve always been done. Startups and Pregnancy have a lot in common because they are both creators of new things—ideas, businesses, structures, life—and to do so, they harness a huge range of power.

Achieve More by Doing Less — Episode #008 With Kate Northrup of the Origin Collective 

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Kate Northrup always knew she wanted to be a mother, and she pursued entrepreneurship partly because of the freedom it could afford her to be there for her kids. What Kate wasn’t counting on was the way pregnancy would change her drive and refocus her energy when it came to the business. She admits that it took her a long time to “get back in the game,” and that her husband and business partner, Mike, picked up the slack. But Kate credits having her daughter, Penelope, with initiating a personal evolution that allowed her to clarify her desires and ultimately renew her interest in the business and the way she thought about showing up for work in the first place. Perhaps there was something revolutionary here: because, as she shares in this episode, she found that she was able to achieve more even while doing less. And that some of her most productive weeks happened when she was working only 20 hours a week on the business. Today Kate shares her “shocking and awesome” birth experience, explaining how parenthood impacted her business as well as her marriage.

Why We’re Bad at Predicting How Parenthood Feels

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Often we choose not to do something because of how we think we’ll feel about it. But it turns out we’re not that great at understanding how something will actually feel—because we can’t account for how we, ourselves, will change in the process. Today we interview father of three kids under four, Mathias Jakobsen, the founder of Think Clearly, about his journey into parenting.

What If I Am Not a Good Mother?

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There were 10 of us. I came first and helped raise the rest. I did not want my mother’s life. I did not want to alternate between being pregnant and breastfeeding for twenty years, nor did I want the underlying lack of autonomy and choice that represented to me. Yet still, her legacy and example ran deep, and I was always sure that whatever edition of motherhood I might someday desire would come easily to me. I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.

Filling the Gap With a Hidden, Untapped, Talent Pool

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Dominie Moss is focused on a very specific gap in the market that is wildly underserved: women who have taken a career break and want to get back to work. In her estimation, there are 427,000 women in the UK alone that want to return to executive-level positions and have the talent to do so, but no clear path for what it looks like (yet). Dominie’s company is setting out to fix this.

“Just You Wait!”

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Why do people constantly caution you about what’s about to get worse? In one of the parenting groups I’m in, we started having a discussion about the phrase we always hear: “Just you wait.”

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