From the outside, it appeared that Katrina Alcorn was “doing it all.” She had three healthy kids, a loving husband and a growing career. Then one day in 2009 while driving to Target to buy diapers, it all came to a crashing halt when she had a breakdown. As she battled her way through crippling depression and tried to heal, she wondered how other women – many others with less supportive bosses, less engaged spouses and lower paychecks – were managing it. As she began talking to other women and listened to their stories of migraines, depression and anxiety, she realized they weren’t. Like her, many were just hanging on by a loose thread.  → Read More

Going back to college at age 25 last year wasn’t an easy decision for me. I went to college at age 18, but took a break to work and earn a living. When I was 20, I became pregnant with my boyfriend’s child. As hard as we tried, the relationship didn’t work out, and we parted ways. That breakup was difficult. Except for some phone calls and emails, he had stopped being involved with us by the time my beautiful baby girl was born.  → Read More

By Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis, Center for Partnership Studies
Women do most of the care work in families; they care for children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women devote more than 110 million hours a year to unpaid interactive child care, more than double men’s less than 55 million hours. This care work is socially and economically essential. But unless we change our current national and state policies, the fact that women do far more of this work than men will continue to be a major reason for women’s disproportionate poverty.  → Read More

Throughout its history, America has continued to reinvent itself, each time producing a better society for more of us than the one that preceded it. Reconstruction improved on the pre-Civil War republic. The New Deal created a “new America” that was a great improvement on the Gilded-Age America. The civil rights movement generated legislation guaranteeing the equality promised in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  → Read More

I’ve got three boys ages 5, 3 and 9 months young. They’re all perfectly spaced by 2 years and 5 months. People say I have a team. Oh yeah, I love my wife. She’s on the team too! She finances our team and she organizes our space.  → Read More

The intersection of care and career is a pain point for many women – and men – as more households are perpetually managing the juggle of raising children and working outside of the home. Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, and author of Wonder Women: Sex, Power and the Quest for Perfection, has been a leading force in igniting conversations around women and leadership. She shared some of her insights on this topic with us via email.  → Read More

I have been reading a lot about “Leaning In” and “Opting Out” lately and debating the merits of working motherhood vs. staying at home. There are countless factors that play into every woman’s decision but recently I found there are two main factors that weigh on my mind: daycare costs and income disparity.  → Read More

Political leaders talk about “family values,” but too often real reforms are set aside when it comes time to draw up the federal budget or do the heavy legislative lifting to ensure that women and men can raise their children, care for their elders, and continue to earn the incomes they need to survive and thrive in today’s economy.  → Read More