We Don’t Say Sorry for Parenting

When my co-founder and I started Hold My Juice, we made a promise to each other early on:

Family-first couldn't just be a slogan. It had to be an operational practice.

The entire point of our company is to help families experience more joy, more presence, more ease. More forts, less logistics. If we destroyed our own families building that, it would be a tragedy. And honestly, a pretty absurd one.

There's a narrative in startups that the "serious" founders are the ones sacrificing everything at the altar of urgency. Don't sleep. Don't take vacation. Don't leave the office before dark.

I increasingly believe the opposite.

Becoming a parent has made me a better operator, a better builder, a better executive. There's research suggesting that after the initial disruption of young kids, many women become more productive over the long term. That tracks with my experience.

Parenting stripped away my tolerance for fake urgency. You get clear, very fast, about what actually matters. That's a startup skill.

I was planning to hop down to NYC for Tech Week. Several women-in-AI events, useful contacts, real learning. Then a notification came from my kids' school: International Potluck Night was the same evening.

It's one of my favorite things our elementary school does. Every family brings a dish from their heritage — homemade dumplings, Haitian griot, injera, Swedish pancakes, fresh pasta. A celebration of diversity and joy, and honestly the kind of evening Hold My Juice exists to help families show up for.

I messaged my co-founder about the tension. Without a beat: "Go to the potluck. This is easy." She was right. We landed on rugelach.

That doesn't mean work never comes first. Startups have genuinely high-stakes moments — immovable deadlines, customer emergencies, fundraising crunches. Sometimes the scale tips toward work, and it should.

But I don't want to burn emotional energy on tensions that could've been rearranged with a little honesty and intentionality.

One practice we've built into our culture is surprisingly simple:

We don't apologize for parenting.

If someone misses a meeting because their kid has pink eye, or daycare called, or they were up all night with a vomiting toddler, the conversation is factual. Not "I'm so sorry." Just "My kid is sick. I need to handle this."

That distinction matters more than people think. Apologizing frames caregiving as a personal failure. An inconvenience. A breach of professionalism.

But parenting isn't a deviation from real life. It is real life.

The goal isn't to build a company where work doesn't matter. It's to build a company where your life still belongs to you while you build something ambitious.

Because the whole point of this technology should be helping people have richer, more joyful lives.

Including the people building it.