Model Minority Moms

**Special note to our listeners** Love the show? Help us keep the conversation going! Become a paid subscriber through our ⁠Substack. ⁠Your contributions help us continue to make content on issues related to the Asian-American, immigrant, modern parent experience.****************As we turn the corner into mid-life, we're talking about the questions we're wrestling with at 40 - Am I living a "successful" life? How am I doing with my complicated family of origin? What the f is going on with my body? Midlife crises, anyone?In the first of our series, we tackle a big question: what does it mean to live, and die, successfully? It leads us to some weird places - Gene Hackman, Bryan Johnson who wants to live forever, Lady Gaga and how "success", contentment and happiness might be closer than we think.

**Special note to our listeners** Love the show? Help us keep the conversation going! Become a paid subscriber through our Substack. Your contributions help us continue to make content on issues related to the Asian-American, immigrant, modern parent experience.****************Kindergarten…you think it's far away until it's not. All of a sudden you're faced with a myriad of decisions that you have to research. You may also experience intense anxiety as you worry if you're setting your kid on the right path. What makes for a good elementary school anyway? Is it a warm environment? Diversity? Test scores? How selective it is? Bilingual? Convenient? A PTA vibe that jives? Is this really about your kid or about you?We're going through it now and whether it's pretty or not, we give you the real talk on where we are landing on the big K-question.

For some of us, we always knew we wanted kids, no matter what. For others, that was never in our vision for life but nearing the end of the biological clock, we're revisiting that question. For still others, we may have started one way but ended up another because of relationships, biology, logistics, costs, better understanding of what parenthood entails, the-world-is-ending-feeling, etc. In this episode, we bring back Justine Ang Fonte because she and her partner went through a long journey of trying to decide if they wanted to try to become parents or not. But beyond just the normal internal wrestling, she kind of took it to the nth degree by building massive spreadsheets and even going through a structured decision-making process with a psychotherapist who specializes in helping people make this decision. If you or someone you know is wrestling with this decision, this episode is for you. If you're already a parent and thinking about more, this may be helpful too.

For many millennials, sex education was about awkwardly passing around a banana with a condom on it in PE class or carrying around a sack of flour pretending it was a baby. We want to do it better for our kids, OBVIOUSLY, but... do we really know how to do it better?We are excited to welcome Justine Ang Fonte on the show. She was featured in the ⁠New York Times⁠ about her work bringing sex ed to New York City's private schools (as well as the controversy she encountered with some parents). She is also the voice and author of the Audible Original How to Talk to Your Kids about Sex⁠. Drawing on her 15 years of experience teaching kids about safety, affirmation and joy in their emotional and physical relationships, she offers some tangible tips for parents who are dreading "the talk" (psst - one tip is that it actually turns out it's not just one big talk, it's a series of mini talks over time).

In true MMM fashion, we are releasing our look-back conversation on releasing our 100th episode... on episode 108 X_X. We talk about what keeps us going with the show (psst - its not the big bucks), what our partners think of it, what topics we've considered but decided NOT to do, what our listeners have shared with us, our favorite episodes (it's so hard to choose!), our controversial name, what our pie-in-the-sky dreams for the show would be, and more. Hope you enjoy and sending

Trying to keep career momentum as a mom of young kids can be really tough. On top of all the demands of being a parent, wife, and daughter, going hard at the office can start to feel like a slog. Moreover, being a parent and approaching middle life can surface a lot of questions about your priorities and your choices, including about work. And of course, all your baggage from being a women, Asian-American, child of immigrants is still showing up at the office and not helping you get to the next level in your career. We discuss these issues and more with Minal Mehta, the founder of the executive coaching firm The Ineffable Leader. Educated at Stanford and HBS, Minal worked as a product leader across several leading tech companies such as Google, Amazon, LinkedIn and others. She was born and raised in India and Singapore and is a mother of two tweens in the Bay Area. In her words, Minal's mission is "to empower leaders who've achieved external success from a place of exhaustion and burnout to achieve even greater success from a place of flow."

We're so excited to share with you our first collab with another podcast - Add to Cart! Susan was a guest on the show to discuss her book, her love of Costco and her grumblings about the rising price of matcha lattes :)Listen to the trifecta of the Asian Aunties as Susan Lieu joins SuChin Pak and Kulap Vilaysack on this episode of Add to Cart. Susan talks about writing her first memoir, “The Manicurist's Daughter,” which chronicles her search for answers after losing her mother to a botched tummy tuck. It's an emotionally raw conversation that will leave you hopeful that generational healing is just as real as the trauma. Then, the Aunties dive into her cart, which is truly an ode to Costco and its generous return policy. Susan also shares her solution to inflating matcha latte prices. Lemonada has teamed up with Apple Books to bring you the Lemonada Book Club. “The Manicurist's Daughter” by Susan Lieu is our audiobook of the month! Listen here.To hear more episodes, follow Add to Cart wherever you get your podcasts or head to: https://lemonada.lnk.to/atcfd 

If you've been with your partner for awhile now, you may realize that there are certain conflict patterns that happen over and over. He does something that pisses you off, you bring it up, he does X, you do Y, so on and so on, over and over again. Or vice versa :p Or you guys are just so tired from parenthood, work, continued disappointment or dealing with things from the past that you have just settled into a pattern of burying feelings. Have you ever considered marriage counseling? :/On today's show, we talk to Jessica Sather who is a Filipina-American mom and licensed marriage and family therapist trained in the Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) modality. We talk through the common issues she sees in couples and the EFT approach in trying to get a little deeper into the reasons underlying our conflict patterns and reformulate them for (hopefully) a better relationship with our partner where we feel mutually seen, understood and supported.To contact Jessica, please see her website: www.mabuhaytherapy.com She is a fully-licensed MA, LMFT therapist who can see patients in Washington State and California.

Do you remember watching MTV as a teenager and noticing that one of the hosts was kick-ass Asian-American young woman named Suchin Pak? Well, guess what - WE HAVE HER ON OUR SHOW TODAY and we go deep on her unexpected path to MTV, what it was like to work that job for over a decade, what life is like for her now as a mother of two, and the winding journey she's been on with her husband who has been battling a severe and mysterious auto immune disease for the past several years. It's a doozy of a conversation and we hope that you enjoy it and that it brings back memories of seeing Suchin rocking so many cute outfits on MTV in the early aughts. To get more about Suchin, check out: - Add to Cart podcast, which she co-hosts with Kulap Vilaysack who we also recently had on the show - IG: @suchinpak - Men's Health article penned by Suchin's husband Mike Bender about his health journey

Do you ever wonder why it's so hard for you or your partner to stick to a budget? Or organize your finances? Or even talk about money? Do you read tons of financial advice but struggle to actually do it? Or do you tend to stick your head in the sand and hope it will all work out? In this episode (our first *video* episode!), we talk to Shang Saavedra, the author of the recently released book called Wealth Is A Mindset. She has coached over 200 households into a dignified retirement and taught over 8,000 individuals on how to achieve financial freedom through her courses. We talk about how our upbringing and our mental health are so intrinsically tied in with how we manage (or don't manage) our finances. To learn more about Shang's work, please check out the following: - Book: Wealth Is A Mindset - IG: @savemycents - savemycents.com

We talk a lot about mental health and we thought it was about time to bring on a real mental health expert on the show, preferably someone who also has personal familiarity with the Asian American experience. What do you think of psychiatric medication? Do you ever see any Asian-Americans who are our parents generation (and what is THAT like???) What do your parents think about what you do? How do you deal with the stigma of mental health treatment in the Asian community? We discussed these questions and more with Grace Liu, a Stanford-trained psychologist and Chinese-American mom. She brought a very thoughtful and frank take on all of these questions and we loved having her on the show! If you are interested in following up with her after listening to the episode, she can be found here: www.graceliumd.com

Have you ever wondered why the term "hysterectomy" sounds so similar to the word "hysteria"? Well it turns out it's because the ancient Greeks thought that the root of all of emotional troubles for women were due to a uterus that just wandered around the woman's body if it wasn't kept busy with enough sex and pregnancies. Tune into this hysterical (pun intended) interview with author and OBGYN expert Dr. Karen Tang as we discuss her new book "It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but were never told)". We ask her about the OBGYN questions we still don't have answers to, the challenges facing women's health research and care, and why all of us know the word for penis in our mother tongue but none of us know the word for vagina. To learn more about Dr. Karen Tang's work: - Get her book at Amazon - Follow her on IG @karentangmd

Kulap Vilaysack is a bit of a unicorn. She's a Laotian-American actress, comedian and show creator who has directed and produced hit shows like Bajillion Dollar Propertie$. She even has a real DC Comics superhero inspired by her, Katharsis! She also created a documentary about her family called Origin Story, where she tells the story of her father who she learned wasn't her biological dad when she was 14, her complicated mother who fled Laos as a refugee, and her biological dad whom she does not remember. She's also a mom who went through a long and arduous fertility journey. If you can't tell yet, she's a bad-ass 2nd generation Asian-American woman who tells it like it is. We are so honored to have her on the show to talk about what it was like to face her family's secrets and how that has connected to her journey of becoming a mother herself. To learn more about Kulap and follow her work, check out the following: - Watch Origin Story on Amazon Prime - Check out the Add to Cart podcast, where Kulap and her co-host give their "subversive take on consumerism."

If you weren't worried about climate change already, don't worry! Becoming parents will surely increase your climate change anxiety. From the very real concern of leaving behind a burning and unlivable planet to your children, to the very real concerns now of protecting your young ones from excessive heat, wildfire smoke, floods and storms, parenthood is **guaranteed** to give you greater climate anxiety. But in all seriousness, we break down this very real, very concerning issue through the lens of parenthood. We also recorded this episode back in the summer so... there might be some summer references.. sorry/ not sorry?

Most of our listeners (and us) grew up in a pretty traditional education system. There were lessons, there was a lot of practice, there were tests and if you got a A, someone asked why it wasn't an A+. For many of us, it also was layered with a ton of stress and constant anxiety. It was all supposed to lead one day to admission to a top tier college and then a rather hazy happily-ever-after. Now raising our own kids, we are often conflicted on how to approach education - how much should we care about test scores? Should we just let kids do whatever they want because it should be all kid-led? What if they don't learn how to read or do math? We break it down with Susan Yao, a veteran educator, school leader, mom of two, and founder of the Vermont Village School, an independent experimental school centered around the UnSchooling movement. We get real about the benefits and concerns of traditional and less-traditional schooling approaches, and what questions parents can ask themselves to form an educational approach that best serves their family.

WARNING: This episode contains spoilers for Bridgerton (seasons 1, 2 and 3), Queen Charlotte, the Kdrama Crash Landing on you and C-Drama The Double. In this episode, we're talking about the Golden Hour - the time between roughly 9pm-10pm, when the kids finally have fallen asleep, the house is decently cleaned up, and you finally have a little time to do something that *you* want to do. Sometimes, a great TV show is just the ticket - something that's interesting but also a little fantasy. We bring you what we've been loving watching lately and break down our thoughts for each show.

Tells children "doe" means "small deer" (that's wrong). Bops sideview mirror from minivan for the nth time. Cannot remember garage code that you've had for the last two years. Having more trouble finding phone than usual. Maybe thinking about putting kids' cereal in a timed pet food dispenser. Maybe. If you can relate at all, this episode is for you mom/ parent of young children. If you're just confused, join the club and listen anyway - it's a funny episode, albeit scattered. (See! We remembered the word 'albeit' - we are definitely not having early dementia).

We humbly present to you, our mini-dad-bootcamp in podcast episode form. If you're thinking about being a dad, listen to it now. If you're already a dad, listen to it before it's too late. If you're a woman in a heterosexual relationship, send this to your partner. What we say isn't easy but it's real, and we hope our 15+ years of experience parenting in the context of a marriage can help you, your marriage and your family survive (dare we say even thrive) in the throes of raising little human beings.

It's your birthday, it's your birthday, we're going to partay like it's your birthday... ok maybe it looks a little different when you're nearing 40 with young kids. In this episode, we hash out our feelings around our birthdays - the expectations, the disappointments, the meltdowns we're not proud of and Susan's dream birthday... a FUN-eral.

In the part two of this interview, we dive deeper with Peipei into the impact that her mental health journey has had on her relationship with her partner and her children, and ways she has tried to rebuild from the toll that her struggles have taken on her relationships.

In this episode, we sit down with Peipei Fiore, a former television executive and mom to three girls, who was forced to confront her long-running anxiety and depression when she unexpectedly became a mother and wife. She's also an OG MMM listener who was gracious enough to share her story with us. In this two-part series (second part to be released in two weeks), we dive deep into Peipei's journey of wrestling with eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and the pressures of keeping up in school, work and social dynamics, and the milestone events along the way that finally convinced her to seek the help she needed to get better.

Kat Lieu is the mastermind behind the popular Subtle Asian Baking IG/FB account as well as the cookbooks Modern Asian Baking and Modern Asian Kitchen. While her food content has found a rapidly growing audience going from zero to over 150k+ followers in just a few years, she actually spent the first decade of her adult life in a totally different career path that was chosen for her by her parents. Her career and family journey has been full of twists and turns and all the while, she kept her passion for food, writing and storytelling alive. We were inspired by Kat's philosophy of living a creative life, and how that affects her parenting outlook as well. Bonus cooking tips included! You can find Kat's cookbooks and IG for further inspo here: Modern Asian Baking at Home Modern Asian Kitchen @katlieu

Need we say more? Most moms - we daresay every mom - is familiar with burnout. How can you not be when you are meeting the demands of helpless, emotionally unregulated littles 24/7 for years? Especially when people around you often seem to minimize, not notice and/or actively criticize what can feel like an endless trudging sacrificing juggle. Here in true MMM fashion, we feel our feels and put out some real talk about why it is, does it need to be this way and what can we do to may be make it better.

When us first-gen Asian-Americans become moms, one journey in particular starts looming in the horizon: introducing our kids to our mother country, with all its foods, sounds, customs. When is the right age? What should we expect? Should we bring a car seat? Is it even possible to take your young child to another country when normal daily life can feel like a struggle? Well, Kate has just taken her girls to Asia for the first time and she's here to give us the good and the ugly of it all.

Another totally under-discussed issue in popular culture: what happens to love between spouses after the kids come. In rom coms, it's always happily ever after right? The end. Talk about over-simplification. The truth is that your relationship with your partner WILL change after kids - for better or for worse. In this episode, we talk about our expectations vs the reality of relationship with your spouse after you have kids, and our thoughts on how to get through parenthood with your relationship stronger, not destroyed.

Being female, Asian-American, and a parent - that's a triple whammy right there for a bad case of the considerate-ness. Do you struggle with feeling like you are considerate but it's not reciprocated, resulting in rage, burnout, and disappointment? Do you feel like you are playing by rules of considerateness that you alone are playing? Are you right or is everyone else? If these questions resonate, this episode is for you.

Our listeners are in Seattle, of course, but also heavily in SF, LA, New York, DC area... the usual suspects. When we talk to people in these cities and beyond, the topic of moving to Seattle often crops up. People are Seattle-curious, we often find. So... is the Emerald City all that it's reputed to be? We take you beyond the Space Needle and give you an insider's look at what's it really like to live in the Pacific Northwest's largest city.

In this final episode of our mini-series on divorce, we interview Diem Chi Nguyen, a Seattle-area attorney who focuses on family and divorce law. She walks us through the basics of the divorce process - how long it takes, how much it costs, different paths to take, how custody of children are handled, how assets and debts are split - peppered with anonymized stories of how things can turn really weird, emotional, irrational in these often highly-charged life events.

In this very special episode, we interview an anonymous guest about her experience going through a divorce - what led to the separation, how she and her ex handled things with their kids, all the extremely messy and hard ups and downs of the process and how she survived it all. Whether you are considering a divorce, want to support a friend going through divorce, or just want to hear a real-life, in-depth accounting of navigating the entire process, this episode is for women everywhere.

No, the other D-word (guess who wrote that one! :) In the first episode of this mini-series, we are talking about divorce. Hurtling into middle age, divorce seems to be popping up, silently but more frequently around us. We talk about the how we saw divorce in our own families growing up and how we think about divorce now. When do we work through it? When is enough enough? Where are our bright lines and non-negotiables? And what about the kiddos? Even though we are all thankful that divorce is a more viable option for many women (and men) in terrible relationships, deciding to get divorced and actually getting divorced seems anything but straightforward.

Since we were little girls, we got all kinds of messages - both direct and otherwise - about how we looked and how we should look. Even as full-grown women, those messages still echo loudly in our minds. We've had to evolve - sometimes painfully - to grow our confidence and embrace our appearance. As with so many issues, becoming moms has forced us to re-examine what we say to ourselves and our children about appearances, standards of beauty, and how to reconcile it all.

Does any other mom experience blinding anger on the regular? Anyone? Anyone? Ok, so no one right? Then this episode is for us (and for you if you know what we're talking about). We break down why the heck do we get SO mad sometimes, is it normal, is it bad and how to handle it when the anger pressure is building and we're about to blow.

In this very special episode, we bring you an exclusive interview with Susan Lieu, the author of the forthcoming book, the Manicurist's Daughter, available in bookstores on March 12th and available for pre-ordering now! It is already getting rave reviews from top outlets, including Publisher Weekly, Kirkus, Elle and Goodreads! Of course, if you listen to our podcast, you will know that Susan is also the co-host of our podcast and that's why we have this amazing opportunity to talk to her in an intimate and familiar forum. We are so so proud of this milestone for Susan and it's been an honor for us (Kate and Jeanette) to walk with her as she has been going through this 3-year journey of meeting her literary agent through her shows, writing a book proposal, selling it to Celadon/MacMillan, and writing draft after draft of her book to get it ready for the world. If you are a fan of our pod, please please place your pre-order today and enjoy the tidbits about the book in this episode. Sending hugs, Jeanette, Kate and Susan

As a mom, it can feel like you're running 24/7 and sometimes even that's not enough. If you can afford it or have people in your life who are available, many moms need help - help with childcare, help with cleaning, help with meals, help with laundry... heck, sometimes just an extra pair of hands to go get towels while your child is throwing up is invaluable. But getting help - whether paid or unpaid - is often more complicated and loaded than is generally acknowledged. Here, we deliver our honest take on getting help that we all desperately need.

Taking forever to put on shoes. Leaving toys on the floor. Refusing to come to dinner. Fighting with siblings. Sneaking a piece of forbidden candy. When the inevitable need for discipline crops up with our children, how do we react? As is frequently the case, so much of it is informed by how we ourselves were parented. Join us for a discussion of how we were (or weren't) disciplined growing up, how we are (trying) to approach discipline with our own children, and the struggle to reprogram our brains to react in a better way when the inevitable misbehaving happens.

What makes a good husband, a good boyfriend, can be a little different from what makes a good baby daddy, in our opinion. Combining our 15 years of child-rearing experience (don't ask us how we calculated that!), we share our highly non-expert opinion on what's important in a baby daddy.

Bloody, leaky, crampy, moody, inconvenient, embarrassing, painful... yet it's what allows us to create new human life. Yes, we are talking about our periods - what has been our relationship to Aunt Flo throughout our childhood, our teenage years, our young adulthood, trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, post-partum, up until now. How have we interacted with our parents, friends, partners, society at large and now, our kids with this messy yet vital part of life?

Invites, venue, food, cake, activities, goody bags. Presents or no presents? Invite whole class or just a select few? What's the budget for a three-year-old's birthday? Yup, we're talking about the thing that at a certain point in your parenthood journey, starts taking over your social calendar - kids' birthdays.

Providing better for our children than we had is a no-brainer. But how much is too much when it comes to the endless types of activities we can sign up for? How much of our intention to provide exposure and opportunities is more of a projection of our own insecurities? Are we talking about T-Ball or are we talking about trauma? And what's even the point of all of these activities? All that juice and more.

If you were an overachieving child/ young adult, does it ever leave you entirely? What are the costs (and benefits) of being a perpetual overachiever? Do we secretly want our kids to overachieve though we're trying our best to present a chill demeanor? We bring the honest talk at a live recording at our beloved alma mater and poster child of overachievement, Harvard.

Ok, we are going there. You're a working mom who is highly competent, driven, ambitious, well-credentialed and… you're going to switch to a more flexible, lower-intensity career? Whaaat? It's a common and significant shift among many moms we know, but glossed over with shrugs, shame and a little chip on the shoulder. In MMM style, we unpack all the feelings around choosing to downshift your career as the lead parent–without gaslighting you.

Language is loaded. Preserving our mother tongue with ourselves and the decision (and labor!) of passing it down to our children is super complicated. We talk about what it means to feel like a “cultural orphan,” our aspirations for our kids when we were first pregnant, and the honest reality of how it's going. 

How do we actually know if a school is a “good” school for our kids? How do we actually get a spot? (spoiler: banana bread yields mixed results). How to manage transitions from a situation you and your kids know to something that is new?  What if we feel like we made a mistake moving our kids to the new school at the first dropoff :( Here are the real stories and the real feels behind the happy first-day-of-school pics on IG.How do we actually know if a school is a “good” school for our kids? How do we actually get a spot? (spoiler: banana bread yields mixed results). How to manage transitions from a situation you and your kids know to something that is new?  What if we feel like we made a mistake moving our kids to the new school at the first dropoff :( Here are the real stories and the real feels behind the happy first-day-of-school pics on IG.

So yeeeah… we were talking and we are back together. Nope, not with our exes, with our show.  Why we disbanded, why we came back, and unpacking how restarting a thing is twisted in the fear of failure. Plus, a live recording opportunity in October!

Yep, you read that right. After publishing nearly 70 episodes over the last 2 years, we are wrapping up our show with one final episode. Tune in to hear how we came to this decision and our parting words to our dear listeners. The show is ending but you can still keep track of us. Feel free to follow us at: Jeanette: Instagram @acanary0 and website https://acanary.com Susan: Instagram @susanlieu and website https://www.susanlieu.me/ Kate: Instagram @wonderfulkatewang and website https://wonderfulkatewang.substack.com

Monosyllabic answers. Slammed doors. Huge messes. No, we're not talking about toddlers. We are talking about the other "t" word... teenagers. Believe it or not, like it or not, our chubby little angels will turn into angsty, horny, grumpy teenagers one day. We talk to Dr. Emily Kline, author of "The School of Hard Talks: How to Have Real Conversations with your (Almost Grown) Kids," about an important new book she's just written about the mindset and tools that parents should embrace to have maximal influence on their older children. If you liked the interview, you can order the book here: https://a.co/d/7TWaw3F

Are there any vacations any more post-kids? Or are there only trips now - a thing you do where you're not in your own home, where you don't have all the things that you've bought to make life a little easier, where your kids will sleep and eat less well? Do you need a vacation from your vacation? In this episode, Kate, Susan and Jeanette talk about the mindset shifts that have helped us enjoy 'vacations' more and how we think about them now with young children.

Do you miss those days when you could breeze into the airport 45 minutes prior to departure in your Uber and carry-on-only luggage? With diapers, pack n plays, strollers, wagons and more traveling with kids is different now, to say the least. In this episode, we share our learnings and tips of making traveling with kids a little less stressful (with the usual healthy dose of humor and occasional f-bomb :)

Some of us may have heard about the au pair program, considered it or even participated as a host family. Is it a Mary-Poppins-dream-come-true or is the reality having a foreign teenager live in your house, driving your car and not being of much help? Susan, Jeanette and Kate bring our honest perspectives of participating in the au pair program as well as channeling some of the anonymous au pair stories we've received on the DL over the years.

Elimination communication. Child-led toileting. Pullups. Incentives. Potty training books. Pee everywhere. Poop smeared on walls. Kid and parent meltdown. What are the visions floating around in your head when you think of potty training? As Susan approaches potty training time, Jeanette and Kate talk through their experiences (the good and the fails) and give a real-life perspective on potty training your child in the modern age.

What our parents expect of us in their retirement is one thing. What we expect of our kids in our own retirement is another... or is it? In the second part of this episode, we ponder what we expect of our kids in our own retirement. Financial help? Emotional companionship? Occasional Popeye chicken drop-off at an aging hippie commune? (ok that last part only applies to Susan). Join us as we take a moment to look farther out into the future and share how we think our kids might play a role in our golden years.