In this episode of Parents Who Think, Danusia Malina-Derben speaks with Laura Vanderkam—author, researcher, and mother of five—about time. Not just how we spend it, but how we talk about it. Laura’s work tracks how high-achieving women actually use their hours, and what she found flies in the face of everything we’ve been told: the women she studied weren’t burned out, short-fused, or collapsing in heaps at the end of each day.

Danusia and Laura get into it: why our cultural myths around ‘busy women’ persist, how remote work has reshaped everything from commutes to childcare, and what happens when you zoom out from the day-to-day panic and look at time over a full week. This conversation refuses the tired narrative that success for women is always a breathless, collapsing compromise.

Instead, it’s a quiet rebellion—a reclaiming of time, energy, and joy.

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Credits:

• Hosted by Danusia Malina-Derben

• Edited, Mixed + Mastered by Marie Cruz

• Cover art by Anthony Oram