Model Minority Moms

By Kate Wang, Susan Lieu, Jeanette Park

What's Model Minority Moms about?

Welcome to Model Minority Moms where we reckon with the myth of success in career, family and life. We’re Jeanette, Kate, and Susan - Harvard classmates and Asian American working moms who get real about the pressures of fitting in while standing out.

https://modelminoritymoms.com

Model Minority Moms is a project of Real Life Media LLC.

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Model Minority Moms episodes:

05.10.2024
Ep85: Divorce FYI
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...
04.26.2024
Ep84: A divorce in real-life
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...
04.12.2024
Ep83: The D-word
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...
03.29.2024
Ep82: Maybe we're ok, maybe it's Maybelline
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...
03.15.2024
Ep81: Mom Rage
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...
03.01.2024
Ep80: An Exclusive with the author of A Manicurist's Daughter
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...
02.16.2024
Ep79: Getting help as a mom
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...
02.02.2024
Ep78: Discipline - you got it under control, right?
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?...
01.19.2024
Ep77: What's in a baby daddy?
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...
01.05.2024
Ep76: Periods
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...
12.15.2023
Ep75: Birthdays birthdays
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...
12.01.2023
Ep74: Too Enriched for my blood?
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...
11.17.2023
Ep73: [LIVE RECORDING] Almost over the hill - Confessions of a recovering, middle-aged overachiever
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...
11.03.2023
Ep72: Downshifting careers as a Mom
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...
10.20.2023
Ep71: Clinging to the Mother Tongue
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...
10.06.2023
The Back to School Episode
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...
09.22.2023
Backstreet's Back -- All Right?
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...
04.07.2023
Ep68 - Our Final Episode
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...
03.31.2023
Ep67: The dreaded teenage years - a book with Dr. Emily Kline
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...
03.24.2023
Ep66: Vacationing with kids - the big picture episode
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...
03.17.2023
Ep65: Traveling with kids - the nuts and bolts
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...
03.10.2023
Ep64: To au pair or not to au pair?
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...
03.03.2023
Ep63: Potty training
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,...
01.13.2023
Ep62: For Real Tho - what we expect from our kids in our retirement
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...
12.23.2022
Ep61: FOR REAL THO - supporting parents in old age
It's one of the main markers of Asian filial piety - supporting your parents in their old age. Except historically, women shouldered most of that burden and were also shut out from working outside the home. Except historically, very few...
12.16.2022
Ep60: Bonus - Figuring Out the Santa Policy (repost)
This was our Episode #18 from Christmas last year that was a surprise hit. We recorded it on a lark and it ended up being one of the most popular episodes of 2021. Reposting it for the enjoyment of fans...
12.09.2022
Ep59: FOR REAL THO - How do you find a decent therapist?
A lot of listeners have asked us about our mental health journeys - what prompted us to seek mental therapy, how we dealt with the stigma of seeking therapy, how we found a therapist that was a good fit. In...
12.02.2022
Ep58: FOR REAL THO - Help! My mom distorted my body image growing up and now she is doing the same to my daughters.
We are SO excited to introduce a new series of episodes called FOR REAL THO where we discuss questions and topics that our listeners have submitted to us through our website. We will periodically release these short episodes where we...
11.18.2022
Ep57: Holding onto relationships when we disagree
There's a lot of talk today amongst millennials about cutting ties with the people who hurt you, bring you down, disagree with you - our show wades into that territory quite often as well. And while that route might be...
11.11.2022
Ep56: Rupture and repair (or no repair?) between parents and kids
It will happen to almost everyone. One day, you will react to your kids' behavior in a way that you aren't proud of. What does that look like and how do you handle the aftermath? Well, it probably is heavily...
11.04.2022
Ep55: Second time around - navigating inter-sibling tension and rivalries
Fighting over toys/parental attention/who gets to talk/who picks the next song or TV show. Crying over mean words and hurts, real and perceived. Competition with your sibling to be the smarter/cuter/funnier/stronger/more interesting one. On the other hand, we melt when...
10.28.2022
Ep54: Second time around - can we maintain our sanity?
When you have your first kid, your discretionary time goes from 100 pre-kid to 50. When you have a second, it goes from 50 to 5 (but it feels like -50). When the options go from "do you want to...
10.21.2022
Ep53: Second time around - we got a PhD in nursing, pumping, milk storage and formula!
We're only half-kidding. There's no actual PhD in infant feeding that you can get (that we are aware of). But after having learned about the intricacies of latches, lip ties, tongue ties, lipase, craniosacral therapy, breast milk banks, pumps, flanges,...
10.14.2022
Ep52: Second time around - sleep is hard to come by
'Nap when your baby is napping' they say to exhausted moms... but what if this is your second baby and you have a toddler running around 24x7? What if your baby is sleeping fine but your toddler is suddenly experiencing...
10.07.2022
Ep51: Second time around - the early days
Thinking about having a second kid? Or already have more than one? (or you have none but just curious?) A newly minted mom-of-two, Kate shares how her experience with her second baby has been so different from the first... and...
09.30.2022
Ep50: Why does 'fusion' food make us so mad?
In the final episode of our food series, we try to get to the bottom of this question: Why does 'fusion' food make us so mad? Is it because it's bad? Is it because it's ignorant? Not authentic? Not respectful?...
09.23.2022
Ep49: The Last Bite Rule (alternative title: How to eat with Asian Ladies)
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...
09.16.2022
Ep48: Meal plan, grocery shop, wash, chop, cook, clean and repeat
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...
09.09.2022
Ep47: Food is our sixth love language
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...
09.02.2022
Ep46: What is the American in the Asian-American?
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...
08.26.2022
Ep45: Let's have a real conversation about Roe vs Wade
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...
08.19.2022
Ep44: Choosing self-expression
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...
08.13.2022
Ep43: When kids get sick, how do working parents cope?
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...
07.01.2022
Ep42: What is the meaning of meaning in a career?
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...
06.24.2022
Ep41: Inspiration for your career journey - interview with Maggie Hsu
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,...
06.17.2022
Ep40: Career and Money
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...
06.10.2022
Ep39: Managing careers with your spouse
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...
06.03.2022
Ep38: Tiger dad in a foreign land (Part 2 of 'what do your parents think about your career?')
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"...
05.27.2022
Ep37: What do your parents think about your career?
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...
05.20.2022
Ep36: Susan's large intestine career journey (Our mid-thirties career crisis Part 2)
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...

What's Model Minority Moms about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Model Minority Moms episodes:

Ep85: Divorce FYI

Ep84: A divorce in real-life

Ep83: The D-word

Ep82: Maybe we're ok, maybe it's Maybelline

Ep81: Mom Rage

Ep80: An Exclusive with the author of A Manicurist's Daughter

Ep79: Getting help as a mom

Ep78: Discipline - you got it under control, right?

Ep77: What's in a baby daddy?

Ep76: Periods

Ep75: Birthdays birthdays

Ep74: Too Enriched for my blood?

Ep73: [LIVE RECORDING] Almost over the hill - Confessions of a recovering, middle-aged overachiever

Ep72: Downshifting careers as a Mom

Ep71: Clinging to the Mother Tongue

The Back to School Episode

Backstreet's Back -- All Right?

Ep68 - Our Final Episode

Ep67: The dreaded teenage years - a book with Dr. Emily Kline

Ep66: Vacationing with kids - the big picture episode

Ep65: Traveling with kids - the nuts and bolts

Ep64: To au pair or not to au pair?

Ep63: Potty training

Ep62: For Real Tho - what we expect from our kids in our retirement

Ep61: FOR REAL THO - supporting parents in old age

Ep60: Bonus - Figuring Out the Santa Policy (repost)

Ep59: FOR REAL THO - How do you find a decent therapist?

Ep58: FOR REAL THO - Help! My mom distorted my body image growing up and now she is doing the same to my daughters.

Ep57: Holding onto relationships when we disagree

Ep56: Rupture and repair (or no repair?) between parents and kids

Ep55: Second time around - navigating inter-sibling tension and rivalries

Ep54: Second time around - can we maintain our sanity?

Ep53: Second time around - we got a PhD in nursing, pumping, milk storage and formula!

Ep52: Second time around - sleep is hard to come by

Ep51: Second time around - the early days

Ep50: Why does 'fusion' food make us so mad?

Ep49: The Last Bite Rule (alternative title: How to eat with Asian Ladies)

Ep48: Meal plan, grocery shop, wash, chop, cook, clean and repeat

Ep47: Food is our sixth love language

Ep46: What is the American in the Asian-American?

Ep45: Let's have a real conversation about Roe vs Wade

Ep44: Choosing self-expression

Ep43: When kids get sick, how do working parents cope?

Ep42: What is the meaning of meaning in a career?

Ep41: Inspiration for your career journey - interview with Maggie Hsu

Ep40: Career and Money

Ep39: Managing careers with your spouse

Ep38: Tiger dad in a foreign land (Part 2 of 'what do your parents think about your career?')

Ep37: What do your parents think about your career?

Ep36: Susan's large intestine career journey (Our mid-thirties career crisis Part 2)