The Mother Of It All

With the (yes, weird to make it a footnote but) footnote that the global environmental, cultural, social and real human costs of AI are massive, today we are zeroing in on just one question about AI: the impact of AI on kids and parents. How will the coming ubiquity of AI tools in our homes, schools and workplaces impact child development, parenthood and the world our children will inherit in their adulthood? Our guest today is Doctor Dana Suskind, founder and Co-Director of the a Center for Early Learning + Public Health at the University of Chicago, Founding Director of the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Program, and Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She is the author of “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain” and “Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise.” Her next book, on AI and early childhood development, will be published by Penguin Dutton in the Fall of 2026.In this meaty episode, we talk to Dr. Suskind about about how using AI impacts our minds and how she is thinking about its influence on developing brains in particular. What do we know right now about what happens when kids interact with AI? From the episode: “The vast majority of brain development happens, some 90 % happens within the first five years of life, and it is almost entirely dependent on their exposure to language and nurturing interaction. That’s what wires up the brain. We call it serve and return between caregiver and child. Nurturing interaction builds the social brain, and our ability as humans to connect. What does it mean when all of a sudden you have AI tools that want to step in and take over some of those serve and return? Infants’ learn not from perfect interaction, they learn from the imperfect. From that emotionally rich dance between parent and caregiver — those slight mismatches, our imperfect parenting. It’s actually biologically required to [help our children] become human that we are imperfect. This is an important moment. A.I. could fundamentally change who we are if we’re not careful.” - Dr. Dana SuskindTwo Princeton professors wrote in a paper on AI recently that AI will “supercharge capitalism.” Will AI also supercharge what is expected from us as humans, and as parents? If we want to insulate our kids from this technological moment, but we also want to raise nimble, adaptable kids who can get jobs in a world where using AI will be a must-have skill, how can we think about this cultural and practical tension in the context of parenthood without having a panic attack?Dr. Suskind helps us think through this rapidly evolving moment with clarity and humor, and she shares a simple strategy from her forthcoming book that Sarah and I will definitely be implementing ASAP.Links: * Dr. Dana Suskind * UNICEF and World Economic Forum paper: Children and AI: What are the opportunities and risks?* Empire of AI by Karen Hao* Your brain on AI (MIT study on ChatGPT’s impact on learning)* Miranda on AI and kids in The Atlantic* AI and colonialism (supertopic at MIT) * Brian Scassellati, Ph.D. at the Yale Robotics lab* Wait Until 8th pledgeIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Sarah and Miranda are joined by Taylor Harris, the author of a new column, You’ve Always Been This Way, about her later-in-life AuDHD diagnosis. We talk Autistic burnout, empathy for the neurotypical parent, the Enneagram, RFK, and sneaker deals.Links:* Taylor’s column (McSweeney’s)* This Boy We Made (Taylor’s book on our Bookshop storefront)* Holotropic Breathwork* Climbing inside a Tauntaun * Spoon Instagram* Celebrity Height Instagram* Follow Taylor on Instagram This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comHey hey paid subscribers! This one is for you! It’s just the two of us, today, your trusty hosts with the mosts, Sarah Wheeler and Miranda Rake, chatting about what’s on our parent-minds. We meander our way into deep and not-so-deep topics like: Self-perception, dirty floors, recent parenting challenges, neurodiversity, personal values and personal spac…

Sarah and Miranda talk to journalist Abigail Leonard, author of Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries, about the social, cultural, and political forces that shape what it unfolds when women become mothers in Kenya, Finland, Japan, and the U.S. Would Leonard have had a third child if she hadn’t been living in Japan at the time? What is it about Finland that makes an ambivalent dad stick around? We explore what’s harder, what’s different, and what seems to be universal about motherhood in four very different societies. Show Links:* Buy Four Mothers in our Bookshop* Abigail on Instagram* Helpful Tips from a Parent with Covid* It Feels Like Every Mom I Know is Medicated in RomperIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Kathryn Van Arendonk is a critic at New York Magazine who writes about TV and comedy, and I (Miranda) have loved her work for a long time. I was watching a lot of Bluey when I first started realizing that all my favorite TV reviews on New York Magazine’s Vulture site were written by the same person, and that person was Kathryn! It felt like magic when she started writing about Bluey and like even MORE magic when Kathryn announced that she will be writing a book (a “cultural deep-dive”) about Bluey that will be out in 2027. She’s currently elbow-deep in Bluey research and she joined us to explore the phenomenon that is Bluey, to answer all our questions about Bluey creator Joe Brumm (like has he left the show?? is Bluey about to be ensh•ttified??) and more. Links: * Lev Vygotsky* Kathryn’s Joe Brumm profile for New York Magazine* The Bluey house Airbnb* Waldorf education* Rudolf Stiener* Beginners Mind* The Daniel Tiger Conspiracy subreddit* Grizzy and the Lemmings* Steven Universe* HildaIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. And it’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Hi! We’re alive out here! (Whether we are truly more alive than usual or merely feeling like we should be because it’s summer remains unclear.) Tune in for a meandering summer catch up between seasons in which we cover vacation nonsense (like asking for an hour to yourself and then waiting for someone to offer it to you), summer illness, whether or not it’s a good idea to throw your phone into the river, a little bit of camp gossip and more. We’re also letting you see our faces, because apparently the internet hates words now and video is all that is real. Or something. Anyway, we’re trying it out! Please note: Like all great things mothers create, this episode is interrupted briefly in the middle by a child screaming that their episode has ended. If you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comDid you know that Sarah Wheeler is actually a real live professional educational psychologist and parent coach? Today, Miranda asks Sarah to put on her Dr. hat and give some professional advice about changing schools. When you start to think about sending your kid to a different school, how can you know that you’re making the right choice? What if the new school isn…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit motherofitall.substack.comIt’s Friday and we’re taking it easy & talking it through! All of it. It’s just the two of us, Miranda and Sarah, checking in about our parenting lives and LIFE lives. We’re talking about everything that’s been going on for us lately, from teaching our kids tongue twisters, checking Reddit for each other, adventures in toddler asthma, motherhood and vig…

To celebrate ADHD Awareness Month, Sarah is doing a little read aloud for us. Her essay, Call Me By My Name: How I Studied ADHD for 15 Years and Didn’t Know I Had It, remains one of the most read pieces on her newsletter. Listen to an audio recording of the essay — about identity, relationships, and what getting a diagnosis does and doesn’t do for us — read by Sarah. Links:* Call Me By My Name on Mompsreading This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

One last summer check-in to tide us all over until Season 3! Sarah and Miranda dive into the chaos and comedy of back-to-school season, teen babysitter economics, toy gun ethics, and of course, the emotional calculus of modern parenting (and Miranda accidentally makes Sarah cry). We unpack whether Stepbrothers is misogyny at its most insidious, why we are selling kids pink AK-47s, our crone fantasies, and the weird beauty of watching your kids become people.Not relevant to the episode at all, but relevant generally: Links* Tilt by Emma Pattee* The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson* Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld* Four Mothers by Abilgail Leonard* Elena Ferrante* Miranda ’s gun toys pieceIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Today, we’re kicking off our summer bonus episodes with a little ode to sidewalk art installations! We’re not just talking about little free libraries (though those are awesome!) we’re talking about the weird, wild and creative ways people express themselves and spread joy through artistic, playful, interactive installations on their sidewalks, stoops and fences, and the unique, important role these little joy blips have in building stronger communities.I first stumbled across the PDX Dinorama Instagram account, run by Portland’s Rachael Harms Malant, during the pandemic. The account didn’t just promote the little Dinorama she built in front of her house, it was more like a record of all the little fun and funky sidewalk installations that are speckled around the city. From PDX Sidewalk Ducks to a 6-hole golf course that someone built in their front yard, the installations Rachael was highlighting on her account went way above and beyond anything I’d seen, and with little kids to get out of the house and little money to spend, I was so grateful for every last one of them. I’ve been wanting to have her on the show for ages to talk about her passion for these little expressions of joy and welcome that pepper our city (and are popping up around the world now), and I am so thrilled to have her episode kick off some summer MOFITA fun.Chatting with Rachael was seriously heart-warming summer fun, and we hope you’ll tune in! In in the episode, she shares tips for creating your own little sidewalk joy invitation, and she has tons of examples and tutorials on her Instagram page, too. But, all you really need to do to get inspired is head outside on a walk, especially if you’re lucky enough to live in a town with folks on the sidewalk joy map. As Rachael explains in the episode: “People are craving community, and community is — and is going to continue to be — so very important for all of us. So this kind of connecting and sharing that Sidewalk Joy helps promote in different communities is going to continue to be vital.”If you walk around your neighborhood and don’t see any little mini-fig galleries, dinoramas or take-a-car-leave-a-cars, maybe your could be the first! LINKS * The Portland Sidewalk Joy map * The Worldwide Sidewalk Joy map* Rachael’s sidewalk joy creation tips + ideasIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

“You're going to spend, if you're lucky, a quarter or a third of your life ‘in menopause.’ And we need dialogue about it. We need to talk about it.”Angela Garbes returns to explore the pains and delights of middle age. Angela schools us on the sex lives of menopausal orcas, why Carl Jung wants us all to become more selfish as we age, and her pitch for a rebrand of the “crone” stage. Links:* Angela in Romper on The Morning Rush* Angela’s Guardian column, Halfway There * Angela’s great books, Essential Labor and Like a Mother* Angela on Substack* ESPRIT nostalgia* Courtney Martin on aging parents* Katie Kitamura’s Audition* Jung and Aging* All Fours* Flash Count Diary* Dying For Sex * Watch Angela’s Guest-Curated series on Mid-life at the Seattle Public LibraryIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Journalist Frankie de la Cretaz joins us to talk women’s sports and all things WNBA! We dig into player and WAG fashion, the visibility of queer families on and off the court, the truth about trans athletes, and mother-athletes past, present and future. Links:* Frankie De La Cretaz on Substack* Frankie’s book, Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League* Molly Dickens’ the Maternal Stress Project* WNBA Documentaries 144 and The Power of the Dream* Basketball Wives* Angel Reese on Insta* Woxer * WNBA x Skims campaign* TBOY Wrestling* So You Think You Know A Lot About The Titanic by Janet Manley* Oh Mary!* No Taste Like Home * North of NorthIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

British author Helen Jukes joins us to talk about motherhood in the animal kingdom, and what human mothers can learn from mothers from other species. What is “natural” about motherhood, what is the true nature of motherhood across species? What can we learn by allowing ourselves to truly see and examine the many roles of the mother in nature? At one poetic and rigorous, Helen Jukes’ beautiful new book, Mother / Animal, is an illuminating exploration of her own matrescence through the lens of motherhood in the animal world. Note: Helen’s book is not available in the U.S. yet, so Blackwell’s (a UK based bookseller) has made some signed copies of Mother / Animal by Helen Jukes available to our listeners via this link. LINKS: * Buy Mother/Animal* Follow Helen Jukes on Instagram* How To Catch A Mole by Marc Hamer * The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush* Revolutionary Mothering* Anne Helen Peterson essay on What Makes Women Clean * Amanda Hess on Mother of it AllIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

MAHA (or “Make America Healthy Again”) motherhood is a bit of a mindf*uck. What, one asks oneself, unites “crunchy” hippie-leaning momfluencers (like Rudy Jude & her wannabes) of the world with someone as spray-tanned Marjorie Taylor Green? One looks like a sentient carcinogen, and one looks like she's never even heard of food dye! So how do we understand their alliance under the umbrella of Making American Healthy Again? For many of us, there are some points of connection with these MAHA moms, which where this conversation gets juicy and frankly a little disconcerting. As Sara Petersen wrote, most moms probably would agree with the MAHA moms in that we prefer that our kids’ treats came without red dye #6, a food dye associated with behavioral side effects. But, unlike a MAHA mom, we’re proud to be up-to-date on our Covid boosters instead of guzzling raw milk and curing our own cancer with red light therapy (or something, tbh we couldn’t bear to go too deep into that one). At the same time that motherhood taps us into our need to give and receive care, the conditions of modern millennial motherhood seem to have stoked a fear-driven and anxiety-ridden individualism. It’s a confusing time, and it’s getting more baffling by the minute. If MAHA mothers care so much about banning food additives like red dye, why have they aligned themselves with an administration that has effectively gutted the FDA? How did we get to a place where expertise is up for grabs and there is so much mistrust in our public health systems? Can we recover? OG motherhood writer and New York Times opinion columnist Jessica Grose joins us to talk through all this and more. LINKS:* Jessica Grose, The Kind of Moms Who Fall for ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (New York Times, Oct 2024)* Screaming on the Inside by Jessica Grose* Sara Petersen: “MAHA Moms Are Wrong About Wellness”* Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst* Ariana Hendrix * Katie Beck On Child-Friendly City Design* Eloise Rickman on Children’s Rights* Sprawl Is A Parenting Problem by Erin Sagan* Noah Wylie being hot again on The Pitt* John Early bitIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes, book reviews and more. If you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!).* Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

New York Times critic at large Amanda Hess joins us to talk about the convergence of parenthood and technology. We dig in to everything from freebirthers to prenatal testing, and from “complicated” pregnancies to the many anxieties (and joys, too) of raising a child in a world where a $1600 Snoo has become a newborn must-have and corporations know about our pregnancies before our immediate families do. Hess’s much anticipated memoir, Second Life: Having A Child In The Digital Age (which we both LOVED), is out May 6th. Links: * Prenatal Testing Offers Pregnant Women More Information Than Ever — But No Support To Deal With It (Romper) * Unfit Parent by Jessica Slice* Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert* Happiest Baby On The BlockIf you love the work we do on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which you can do at motherofitall.substack.com. Paid subscribers get access to everything behind the paywall, like subscriber-only episodes and if you subscribe at the founding member level, we’ll send you one of our awesome tote bags. If you can’t become a paid subscriber, that’s OK! It’s always free and helpful to follow, share, rate and review our show here and everywhere else you listen to podcasts you love. Thank you!* Visit our Bookshop storefront to find all the books we’ve mentioned here and in previous episodes. When you shop there, we get a small affiliate fee (yay, thank you!). * Visit motherofitall.com to send us ideas for a future episode or learn more about the show.* Follow the podcast on Instagram (@themotherofitall) or Bluesky (@motherofitallpod.bsky.social) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

We reunite with author and parent Jessica's Slice ahead of the release of her tremendous book, Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World, to learn how her life with a second child has taught her to throw out the milestones and ask for help (even when it involves a dead possum!). Then, you get to listen to Sarah’s initial interview with Jessica, which remains one of our all time favorites and touches on parenting perfectionism, disability justice, and parenting neurodivergent kids. Links:* Order Unfit Parent * Jessica’s website and Substack newsletter:Jessica Slice writes about disability, poems, and waterfowl* Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong* Lucy Webster’s The View From Down Here* Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight* We've Got This: Essays by Disabled Parents, edited by Eliza Hull This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

Debbie Reber, the host of the Tilt Parenting podcast, talks to us about what she’s learned from having hundreds of conversations on raising differently-wired kids. We discuss independence versus self-determination, low-demand parenting, how to find your parenting integrity, and whether even having these conversations is a parenting privilege. Links:* Miranda is So Busy So Bored* The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories by Vandana Singh* Our new Bookshop storefront!* Tilt Parenting Podcast* Differently Wired: A Parent's Guide to Raising an Atypical Child with Confidence and Hope* I Who Have Never Known Men* Jessica Slice’s Unfit Parent* I Will Die on This Hill* Ross Greene’s Explosive Child* Low-Demand Parenting* The Declarative Language Handbook* Dr. Gina Riley on Self-Determination Theory Culture recs:* The Traitors* Bather’s Library Oakland* Lego Masters* How to Talk to Kids When The World Feels Like a Scary Place* Dr. Megan Anna Neff Neurodivergent Insights This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

“I remember the bizarre feeling of my baby kicking inside me while taking care of patients dying of COVID in the hospital.”Brett was a doctor in a small town when the pandemic hit, with a toddler at home and a baby on the way. In this episode, she and Miranda (who are childhood friends) talk through her experience as a parent, spouse, and physician during those intense years, and the way they continue to impact her and her family five years later. Also, we agree that a cold juice box actually does cure a lot of things, it’s just a fact. Links: * Our pandemic parenting survey (you can still take it if you want to)* The first episode of our pandemic parenting surveyIf you love (or honestly even just like) the work that Sarah & Miranda do here on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You support this work (thank you) and will get access to super special content like subscriber-only episodes and even very awesome tote bags for founding members. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe

“Coming into parenthood for the second time, I knew a lot. And I think I had this vision of what I would do differently, and I was going to plug into the local mom's groups, or plug into the play dates and take the yoga classes with the kids and things like that. And it became not that. It became just very, very isolating.”Sarah talks to Marta, who had a fresh professional and parenting start planned, only to be hit with the pandemic. We discuss her desires to tend to her self now that her kids are a bit older, and to find the community she had wanted to build when shut-down struck. Links: * Our pandemic parenting survey (you can still take it if you want to)* The first episode of our pandemic parenting surveyIf you love (or honestly even just like) the work that Sarah & Miranda do here on Mother Of It All, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You support this work (thank you) and will get access to super special content like subscriber-only episodes and even very awesome tote bags for founding members. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit motherofitall.substack.com/subscribe