The Mama Bear by Chairman Mom

It’s an exciting day for us at Chairman Mom. OK, everyday is an exciting day for us at Chairman Mom. (Read to the end of this thread or this thread to know why we wake up every morning thrilled to work on this company!)

But today is extra exciting. We’ve unveiled to the world something we’ve been working on for the last six months: Chairman Mom corporate memberships. Our first customers is Box, who rolled it out to its global workforce officially on January 1. But a few months earlier than that we set up some card tables in Box’s SF and Redwood City offices and manually signed up 10% of the company in one afternoon. Read more...

I laughed when I saw this question come into Chairman Mom’s queue: “How do I lovingly kick out my adult son?”

It’s one of the few threads on Chairman Mom I haven’t commented on because that reality is so unfathomable based on where I am now as a divorced mom with adorable young kids who I never want to leave and don’t get to see enough! I feel like divorce shoves you into empty nesting 18 years too early (in my case).

Here’s what’s going on in my house instead. My kids have long insisted they are going to live with me forever, but lately Evie is already weakening on that front. Read more...

Consider this a kind of badass “call and response.”

When we did our customer survey last December, we asked what you want to see next from Chairman Mom most of all. While 18% of you are aligned with my personal burning desire for a mobile app (COMING SOON!!!!), 26% of you want more meetups and events. And another 32% of you want more features to help make personal connections like finding friends and other working moms in your city. You want to connect even more deeply than the “vulnerability graph” that we’ve already built on the site. Read more...

Over the last few months the data has begun to stack up: Toxic masculinity is not only harmful for companies and industries, it’s not only harmful for women…it’s harmful for men too.

The APA recently issued new guidelines for treating boys and men that outlined how awful the state of male mental health is. Yes, especially among white male, straight, cisgendered and privileged men.

From the report: “Although boys and men, as a group, tend to hold privilege and power based on gender, they also demonstrate disproportionate rates of receiving harsh discipline (e.g., suspension and expulsion), academic challenges (e.g., dropping out of high school, particularly among African American and Latino boys), mental health issues (e.g., completed suicide), physical health problems (e.g., cardiovascular problems), public health concerns (e.g., violence, substance abuse, incarceration, and early mortality), and a wide variety of other quality-of-life issues (e.g., relational problems, family well-being…Additionally, many men do not seek help when they need it, and many report distinctive barriers to receiving gender-sensitive psychological treatment (Mahalik, Good, Tager, Levant, & Mackowiak, 2012).” Read more...

The great thing about a goal of reading 60 books a year is you go from having these piles of books you bought thinking “Oh I’ll totally get to that…”  that remain untouched to having to regularly scour book shops because you are running out. That’s how I wound up with a remaindered copy of Carrie Fisher’s Postcards from the Edge a few weeks ago. 

I somehow haven’t read any of her books, nor have I seen the movie. 

It’s a few distinct books in one, and I heartily recommend it if you haven’t read it. There’s a bit at the beginning that’s a journal from rehab and a bit at the end about her moping in bed before getting in a sustainable relationship that were well-written but not my favorite bits. Rather, I loved the bit in the middle. Where she’s working on a lame film in the desert, she’s going to the gym, she’s engaged in an eye-rolling cat-and-mouse game with a would be new manager.  Read more...

We’ve got a treat for today’s Mama Bear introduction: Chairman Mom’s Digital Community Strategist Amy Muller is dropping by to talk about a cause that’s important to her this Valentine’s Day.

This week in our Chairman Mom community, the question “Is Valentine’s Day a big deal in your relationship?” was asked. For some, it’s a special day to celebrate love and a good excuse to binge on chocolates and for others Valentine’s Day has come to be known as that “Hallmark holiday” that solicits eye rolls and scoffs. I have kids so I do like to do something special for them—they’ll get Valentine’s Day cards, special treats, and eat their breakfast out of heart-shaped bowls that we’ve had forever and which only emerge once a year. My husband & I sometimes make an effort to do something depending on how busy the particular week is. This year we’re taking it as an excuse for a dinner and movie date night. No, we don’t have a dinner reservation yet but we’ll wing it.  Read more...

It’s a cliche for a reason, right? Time passes more rapidly as you get older, and once you have kids the days are long but the years are short. 

I’m reveling in a new thought about time right now that seems just as obvious and cliche, it’s almost become meditative to think about: A year is a really long time. You can do almost anything undoable in a year. 

Last year, I went from not being able to run for a single minute without wanting to die to easily running for an hour or more. Even enjoying it. More extreme: I lost some 30 pounds in the last year. That is an enormous amount of weight to lose in a year. And yet, it felt like I was losing it at a glacial pace, frequently backsliding. My goal originally was to lose “just” five pounds a month. That seemed doable and approachable and in just 6 months I’d be at my goal!  Read more...

I am so rarely on social media lately, I’ve also been absent or ignorant of all the memes. 

But even I finally started seeing the #10yearchallenge making the rounds. One thing immediately jumped out at me: EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I FOLLOW LOOKS BETTER IN THE NOW PICTURE. Every single one. 

Many look more in shape. Many look more stylish. Many simply have a glow of confidence that comes with success, age, and giving fewer f***s about impressing the patriarchy or playing by BS rules. Most seem like they aren’t trying as hard.  Read more...

Mama Bear newsletter editor Lily here. Happy Friday!

Have you ever had a person from your past pop up at the perfect time? I just had one of those moments this week completely out of the blue.

My digital marketing firm’s been hard at work with two different clients releasing books in the span of eight days. There’s been lots of emailing about chapter excerpt placements, event logistics, and all the nitty gritty details. In the middle of it, I was emailing with a media outlet about a placement, when our contact introduced me to a colleague who was going to help us out. Read more...

I’m sure many of you saw the news/not at all news a few weeks ago. In 2018—once again—female founders got just 2.2% of all VC dollars. As Fortune put it,“In 2018, all female founders put together received $10 billion less in funding than one e-cigarette company, Juul, took in by itself.” And that collective $2.88 billion was split across nearly 500 female lead teams. All-male teams (all male-teams!) got 76% of the total. That pretty much cuts most women out of the startup game mostly because they were born women. It’s hard to build a track record when we can’t get named to mixed gender teams, let alone raise money for our own ideas.   Read more...