Model Minority Moms

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On this episode, we ask a question that might trigger many - MOM WHAT'S FOR DINNER? HONEY, WHAT'S FOR DINNER? HOW MANY MINUTES UNTIL DINNER? WE ALREADY HAD THAT YESTERDAY. I DON'T LIKE THAT. THAT'S NOT HEALTHY. THAT'S NOT YUMMY. THAT'S TOO SPICY. TOO SALTY. TOO FATTY... It's enough for us to want to get down on all fours and howl at the moon (or at least that's what Susan says).
Once you have kids, you all of a sudden realize that your family needs to eat. Every day. Usually multiple times a day, in fact. For kids, it can be up to five times a day. What was once in the background of your life now becomes an everyday BIG THING. Making meals DAILY that are tasty, reasonably healthy and meet everyone's requirements IS SO HARD. IT DOESN'T HELP THAT WE'RE ASIAN. Feeding your family involves so much work - planning, monitoring, shopping, prep, cooking, cleaning every day, sometimes multiple times a day. We haven't even gotten to whether our kids actually even eat the food we make. We talk through all of it, with a lot of laughing and several f-bombs on this episode.

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Do you, too, hear the siren call of moving your family abroad? The promise of sun and your dollar going (much) further for everything from boba to quality babysitters? An international experience for your kiddos and a long-overdue quenching of your thirst for travel? Well, Kate hears it and she's answering that call. In this episode, she talks to us about the decision to relocate to Asia for much of the next 1-2 years, what drove her to take this step, what pros and cons she considered and how she's setting up life for herself and her family in a new country.

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For millennial women, if you're lucky, your parents won't start getting sick until your kids are out of the house. But for many of us, the reality will be that we will be sandwiched between raising kids who are still-to-launch and parents who are starting to develop serious health problems. Parenting and caregiving to an ailing senior can each be full-time jobs but add to that a "real" full time job and you're working triple time.
We talk to Dr. Kathy Zhang, a Chinese-American palliative care doctor who has worked with many families that are supporting a loved one through serious illnesses and end-of-life issues. She talks through what she's seen that helps families navigate these times more smoothly and what can be done now to try to prepare for the future. Closer to our current reality, she also talks through the most common end-of-life regrets and how those hold important lessons for all of us who are still living healthy lives.
To check out more about Dr. Kathy Zhang, follow her on IG at @dr.luyikathyzhang

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If your kids are four or older, it may have started. The questions about getting a puppy. Or a kitty. The promises that they will "help take care of it." You might start thinking, well, the kids are out of diapers now so maybe we can manage. HALT. HIT PAUSE and listen to this episode first. Ok, it might be an hour long episode just for us to tell you DON'T DO IT! But we guarantee several disbelieving snorts from Jeanette, something about Italian men professing their love to Kate and Susan, cyrofreezing for pets, invitations to ride an elephant (please, it's a real elephant) and dogs on roofs.

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If you could be the chief policy maker for your country right now, what would you change to make having children more attractive to women? Longer parental leaves? Childcare subsidies? Making corporate life entry/ exit/ part time jobs easier? Artificial wombs? Kidding (maybe not entirely)
In this final episode of our series, we grapple with what things we wish were true at a macro level to make it easier to raise kids and also to make the choice to have kids more attractive. We also speculate as to why even countries with very generous support for parents (e.g., France) still have low and declining birth rates.