If your social media algorithms look anything like mine, you’ve seen a lot of commentary about Emma Grede, the businesswoman who co-founded Skims and Good American alongside Kim Kardashian and Khloé Kardashian, respectively. Specifically, about Grede’s recent admission about how much time she spends with her children.
A refresher: During a Wall Street Journal interview promoting her new book, Start With Yourself, Grede refers to herself as a “max three-hour mom”, saying that’s the amount of time she spends with her children on weekends. We live in a world that looks for any reason to tear a woman down, so of course, the backlash was swift. Grede wasn’t surprised that a story about her considerable business success quickly became about how she mothers.
“I just think that headline would never be written about a man,” Grede says during an appearance on TODAY with Jenna and Sheinelle. “But no, was I caught off guard? Absolutely not, because I think [women are] held to such an impossible standard as parents and also as businesswomen. What I’m trying to do is be really honest about what it takes and be really honest about the things I don’t do.”
Maybe I’m part of the problem, because I’ll admit it: When I initially heard Grede’s comments, I was rubbed the wrong way.
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Shifting my career after motherhood
I am not a three-hour mom. I left a full-time, in-office job shortly before my twins were born because the idea of spending just an hour or two with them every weekday didn’t sit right with me. That’s not a knock on parents who make a different choice, or aren’t able to make a choice at all—we all want and need different things. To put it simply, though, the pros of keeping that job didn’t outweigh the cons for my family, so I left.
At the time, I thought it was all or nothing, that I had to be all in on work or all in on motherhood. But slowly, I realized I didn’t have to make this binary choice. I built up a freelance business from home, filing deadlines during nap time and sending emails while breastfeeding. People often looked at that balance and told me I had “the best of both worlds.” But I quickly realized that, contrary to the narratives many of us have been fed, we actually can’t have it all. Something has to give.
“Contrary to the narratives many of us have been fed, we actually can’t have it all. Something has to give.”
When I think about it on a deeper level, Grede’s comments actually speak to that reality. She is, as she says, being really honest about what it truly takes to have extraordinary success. You can’t be the mom who is there for every moment and the mom who takes every professional opportunity. You just can’t; there simply aren’t enough hours in the day or enough of you to go around. In a system that makes working motherhood particularly challenging (like, why are the workday and school day fundamentally incompatible?), we have to make sacrifices and tough choices… and Emma Grede is admitting that. She’s saying the quiet part out loud.
“In a system that makes working motherhood particularly challenging, we have to make sacrifices and tough choices… and Emma Grede is admitting that.”
Why Grede’s comments triggered something in me
So why did I feel almost a little bit triggered by what she had to say? Perhaps it’s tied to my own insecurities. I feel pretty confident about how I show up at home and in motherhood. I don’t miss many moments: I volunteer at school, I’m there for drop-offs, bedtimes, and dinner. In short, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I’m so grateful to have the ability and the privilege to do this, but it requires significant sacrifices in my career. Sometimes, that makes me feel unworthy: the fact that I don’t make as much money as I could have or don’t have the type of career trajectory and title I once imagined for myself.
Maybe Grede and I have more in common than I initially thought—at the end of the day, we’re both moms who know we can’t have or do it all. The only difference is that we’ve chosen to sacrifice different things.
The deeper implications
I appreciate the honesty, and I think a lot of moms need to hear Grede’s message, which I imagine is especially helpful for moms who feel guilty about the amount of time they spend away from their own kids. But I also think we need to speak about the deeper implications.
For example, Grede shares that she spends about 20 minutes a day with each child during her appearance on The Oprah Podcast. Look, I’m not here to tell another mom how much time she should spend with her family, but I do think many, if not most, parents (mothers and fathers) would have a tough time with only spending this much time with their own. I certainly don’t think this should be the required standard to have a big career.
Then there’s the other piece: not everyone wants to sacrifice this much family time, and not everyone can afford to. Being away from your kids isn’t just an emotional challenge; it’s also a childcare issue. And let’s face it: in most families, that safety net care is the mom. Setting this sort of intense standard for how parents show up in the workplace harms moms and their careers. I wish we’d seen Grede challenge these systems, rather than just be transparent about what they really look like.
“Setting this sort of intense standard for how parents show up in the workplace harms moms and their careers.”
The false dichotomy mothers face
As women, we are constantly made to feel like we’re not ambitious enough or maternal enough—and those two attributes are often positioned in opposition to one another (see: the girlboss/tradwife dichotomy). To some extent, Grede’s comments feed into that false binary: she essentially tells us that if we want to climb the ranks, we need to be ruthless with our time, and that we need to be willing to give up everything else—even time with our children.
That’s not something every mother is willing—or even able—to do. We don’t all have the power to outsource childcare and domestic labor to the level that she presumably does. Does that mean we aren’t ambitious or powerful? I don’t think it has to. Why can’t we look at it as a spectrum instead of a binary? Why can’t we encourage moms, women, parents, people in general, to find the balance that feels right for them?
In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of nuanced conversations about the idea of ambition in motherhood. We’ve talked about how we got it wrong all these years, how motherhood may change your priorities and shift your availability and change your goals, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your drive to succeed.
Is wanting flexible work a ‘career killer’?
Thanks in large part to more flexible and remote work options, mothers have found ways to reconcile their professional goals alongside their commitments and desires in motherhood. Yet Grede calls work-from-home culture a “career killer” on an episode of Baby, This is Keke Palmer. It’s a tough pill to swallow, to hear this thing that has made work-life balance feel within reach be addressed this way, especially as many parents are being affected by return-to-office mandates.
What I wish Emma Grede would address
I love the idea that flexible work, remote work, and self-employment are tools we have at our disposal to help us find the balance we need in our own lives, to give us presence and professional fulfillment all at once. In reality, though? I’ve seen firsthand, and know many, many other moms who have as well, that these things frequently do affect your career prospects down the line. We just have to decide if that’s worth it or not. And while we do that, we have to re-examine what it truly means to be successful and powerful and yes, ambitious. Grede’s comments don’t fuel that reexamination; instead, they feed into the old dichotomies.
“We have to re-examine what it truly means to be successful and powerful and yes, ambitious. Grede’s comments don’t fuel that reexamination; instead, they feed into the old dichotomies.”
Maybe that’s what makes Grede’s comments so viral: she’s not wrong… she’s just sharing a truth many of us don’t want to acknowledge. Absolute, extreme ideas about work and motherhood, and the intersection of the two, have always been around. Grede isn’t creating them, she’s just pointing them out.
But does she have a responsibility to wield her influence and change the game for her fellow women and mothers? Or does she have a responsibility to give us the cold, hard, unfiltered truth?
Zara Hanawalt, Contributing Writer
Zara is a twin mom and freelance journalist with over a decade of experience covering parenting, women’s health, and culture. In addition to The Everymom, she’s written for outlets like Vogue, Marie Claire, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Parents, Shape, Motherly, The New York Times for Kids, What to Expect, and many others. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, cooking, travel, watching TV, and trying new restaurants.
