Behold, the Humble Apostrophe

When I turned my attention from being a working mom to helping working moms everywhere, I searched high and low for the right name for my work.

The conversations I was having with working moms were eye-opening and heartbreaking. When I conducted focus groups in workplaces, I quickly learned the working moms weren’t having these conversations with each other. It was clear to me how very unclear the problem remained.

To me, the needs of working mothers must be spelled out, they must be brought to the forefront so they are apparent to everyone. No workplace can thrive without its female employees—many of them working mothers—thriving and ascending toward leadership. No family can thrive when its mother is burned out or breaking down.

The tough conversations about this must come out of the hallways and book clubs and happy hour discussions, and become part of our corporate and public policy discussions.

The conversation about working motherhood must take center stage.

So, the name itself was apparent to me from the beginning.

Putting the apostrophe into a’parently was the idea of my brilliant design partner, Jenn. Jenn’s treatment is the perfect way to recognize the tenuous pressure working moms feel very day. It’s right there, a tiny bit of punctuation that says so much. We working moms bear the responsibility of holding together two things, while attempting to replace something that’s missing.

We’re holding together two selves, two vitally important crews of people who need us, and we’re attempting to replace the role of someone to care for the home while we earn the money and raise the kids.

The name of the company is actually just the beginning. There is so much more to the story, and I’m working to distill it into my book, which will be released this fall.

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