Model Minority Moms

As Asian-American first-generation women, we were marinated in all the unspoken rules of food throughout our childhoods. And even though almost nothing was taught explicitly, those food rules are still very much alive and well within us, kicking us to do certain things in a certain way, holding others to certain expectations, taking us on guilt trips when we opt out. We feel this doubly as we oper...

Did you know that you have to feed kids (and adults) every day? Multiple times a day, it turns out. And each meal made at home involves some sort of plan, grocery shopping, prep (washing, chopping, measuring, mixing), cooking and clean up. Though it might have been a hobby or an afterthought in pre-kid life, the logistics around feeding the family becomes a whole system of tasks in and of itself p...

We are starting an episode series on food and looking at it through the lens of our families, Asian-American culture, our situation as working moms, gender and everything else. For all three of us, we grew up with food as our 'sixth love language'. But it also came loaded with its own baggage of gender expectations and time costs. And now we're operating in a completely different context than our...

What does "American" mean in "Asian-American"? Does it mean legal status, shared culture, shared language, shared benefits, shared commitment and sacrifice? How does that differ for our parents' generation vs ours? How do we reconcile that with the fact that despite being Americans, we as people of Asian descent still face discrimination and more recently even violence at the hands of other Americ...

So how do you really really feel about abortion? And do you have anywhere you can talk about it? With Roe v Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, we dig into where we stand with respect to abortion rights and how we got there. Wherever you are on the issue, we can all agree that it's important, especially for women. At the same time, our cultural and political environment feels super-polariz...

For those of us coming from families with deep dysfunction and/or trauma, we often choose different ways of coping - achievement, power, money, control, even addiction. Anything but despair right? For poet, writer and artist Shin Yu Pai, she chose the path of self-expression through language as a way of making sense of her past, present and future. Her experience of growing up in 1980s Riverside,...

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Between COVID and flus/colds/random GI virus raging through our communities, it can feel like moms just can't catch a break. When your kid is sick home from care, how do you manage to care for them while keeping a toehold at work and keeping everything running in the household? We get real about what life looks like for working mamas when their littl...

Capping off our series on career decisions as Asian Americans, working parents, immigrant kids and products of elite schools, we talk about finding meaning in our careers and how that has evolved from our teens into our thirties. What does meaning in a career even mean? Our discussion took us to a somewhat unexpected destination that perhaps will resonate with you too.

Matchmaker, co-founder of a magazine for Asian-American teenage girls, co-founder of the Gold House collective (a leading AAPI organization for advancing media representation and commercial success), former management consultant, former chief of staff to Tony Hsieh the founder of Zappos, now a venture capitalist with Andreessen Horowitz... Maggie's career has been interesting and impressive to say...

What's money got to do with your career? Is it everything, nothing, somewhere in between? How does the level of compensation influence how you feel about your job? What was your parents' message to you? What's your message to your kids? We tackle these questions and more in our episode on career and money, and our experiences trying to navigate these sometimes treacherous and confusing waters.

What's your strategy for managing career decisions with your spouse? Do you take turns prioritizing one person's career over the other? Do each of you have a defined role? What does money have to do with it? How do you factor in risk/passion/other contributions to the household? In this episode, we talk about how we have managed - or not! :( - career decisions with our spouses and what we've learn...

In part 2 of "What do your parents think of your career?" Susan shares her reflections on how her parents and family have shaped her career decisions. Susan says that her dad was a "tiger dad in a foreign land" - can you immediately relate? Have no clue what she's talking about? Tune in to hear how Susan has tried to keep her performative streak alive while trying to keep her parents happy.

Ah parents... Some of them have strong opinions about your career but have no clue about the actual reality you face. Some of them might have a clue but offer no support. And for some reason, they always seem to say the wrong thing about what you do. If this isn't your experience, we are happy for you. For those of us who feel a small stab to the heart whenever our parents say something about our...

From human right NGO work in Vietnam, to starting a boutique chocolate company, to working as a consultant to the world's largest tech firms, to producing a national one-woman show about her mom, Susan's career has taken many twists and turns. Through it all, she has asked herself the questions 'Who am I and what am I supposed to be doing in this world?" In this episode, Susan shares the many hila...

Forget the mid-life crisis. For many in our generation, we've been going through major career questioning since our mid-twenties. What do we want to do 'when we grow up'? What are we supposed to do with our lives? Careers take up so much mindspace and time in our lives but it can still feel like a struggle. In this first episode of a series on careers, Jeanette and Kate talk through their sometime...

So many more unmarried women in their 30s and 40s are choosing to become a mother without a partner, but it still feels taboo to discuss. You might be one of these women yourself and if not, you probably have a friend who is considering this. We are so honored to have our friend Tamar on our show this week, to walk us through her decision to become a single mom by choice with so much openness and...

Mom Judgement is the cherry on top of the huge mountain of responsibilities we have to manage as parents. Why is there so much Mom Judgement in the world? From family? From friends? From society? Even other... moms?? In this episode, we discuss times when we felt Mom Judgement in our lives and try to get to the bottom of why it exists and what we can do about it.

What's your sugar, screens, salt policy for your kid? Like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until your kid finds the snack bag or walks into a birthday party. We talk through our approaches and how they work out in real life. 

Kate, Susan and Jeanette walk down memory lane and reassess their dating histories (including that time that Susan thought she was going to marry a cult leader). Predictably, we all had really different dating experiences but we all learned some common lessons that we wished we knew when we were starting out.

How did parenthood change your perspective on your career? Did it force you to buckle down so that you could provide the kind of life you wanted for your kids? Pull back so that you could have more time and energy for them? Switch tracks so that you could work on something that inspires you and may be also your kids someday? In this episode, we talk about how becoming moms changed (or didn't chang...

It's an open secret - getting reliable, high-quality childcare as a working mom/dad is tenuous at the best. Even with full-time care, managing a professional career that often demands more than 8 hours a day with kids and home responsibilities is really hard. At its worst, you're paying a whole lot of money for childcare while you're trying to juggle work and a sick toddler staying home. In this e...

Perhaps our #1 fan, Jake  joins us on our podcast to talk about why he loves our show (even if it sometimes makes him a bit uncomfortable), what he really thought when Jeanette gave him a book about bombs for Valentine's Day in college, and what it's like to be a white guy living with your Korean mother-in-law.

Tell-all about how to get your kid into Harvard…JUST KIDDING. Some people think a Harvard degree guarantees you wealth but it’s a double-edged sword, especially for children of immigrants. We dish about applying, getting in, and how the degree sprinkled some fairy dust on our professional and personal lives. We cast off the rose-tinted lenses and give you our unfiltered take on the H-bomb.

Doctor, Entrepreneur, Dad - Nirav, Kate's husband wears many hats. In our interview we found that he has worn many different hats in his life. He shares about his journey growing up as an only child of Indian immigrants in small town America, dropping out of medical school to try photography, marrying a type A Chinese-American and becoming a girl dad.

Sometimes it’s easier to let friendships fade away when there’s conflict or just put up with dysfunction without saying anything. It’s easier that way to avoid the drama. And tbh, we almost broke up ourselves–but then we fought to keep us together. It was superrr scary, but we did it. Because…we’re supposed to be a role model to our kids right?