Amy Henderson Looks To Enlighten Workplaces and Change the Narrative About Caregivers

In her new book, Henderson shares the invaluable insights parents and caregivers learn while tending to children

I first heard about Amy Henderson’s book, Tending: Parenthood and the Future of Work, and her organization TendLab through the Mom’s Hierarchy of Needs website. I soon learned that Amy is a gentle soul with a clear mission: to help caregivers in the workplace with better policies and practices, and also changing the narrative about caregivers in our culture.

Amy experienced unthinkable trauma during her Peace Corps service in Malawi, where she had to decide which starving babies to provide food to because there was not enough to go around. She then worked alongside the late musician Prince in the organization YesWeCode to promote coding amongst Black youth. In her book, Amy describes being at a Prince concert at the end of a demanding launch, painfully full of breast milk and too exhausted to enjoy the moment.

Unfortunately, this is the vision I have of mothers who work on impactful projects — depleted after serving everyone else’s needs. And this is a question I asked Amy and I am trying to answer myself: How do we balance passion with parenting?

After Amy’s third child, she started interviewing working mothers and fathers about how they maintained successful careers while balancing parenting. In her book, Amy does an amazing job describing the raw emotions of motherhood. It made me feel that vulnerability, too. Her book creates an automatic impulse in me to reach out and touch my daughter, just to check that she is okay.

Henderson outlines a social situation that is less than ideal. In the U.S., childcare is expensive and scarce. I once had a nightmarish nanny scenario myself. One day, I noticed my daughter had a large bruise on her face from walking into a table, and she wasn’t normally clumsy. Another time, after returning from a trip to D.C. and having been awake since 2 a.m., this nanny let my daughter fall on her back and hit her head on the concrete. Her response was: “She’s not listening to me or cooperating.” I asked her to leave as calmly as I could.

I took the next three weeks off of work to be with my daughter and find another nanny. Over the next few days, I noticed how scared she was. It felt devastating to have unwittingly put her at risk. Recently, my daughter was upset because she couldn’t do something and didn’t want to disturb me on a work call. I reminded her, “You always come first. Please know that. You are more important than my work.”

Amy’s book asks you to examine your relationship with parenting. Being a working mom creates a lot of internal conflicts. Oddly enough, both of my children can’t wait to become parents. In contrast, I never wanted kids. I don’t know how to convey to them in a positive way that parenting is hard, without putting them off of it. I wish I had known beforehand how hard it gets and what to expect.

In Tending, Amy talks about her transformation into a mother. She realizes that resisting negative feelings doesn’t help. She needs to let feelings in, not just for herself, but for her children as well. She gathers stories of other strong women who unraveled in the motherhood process but ultimately succeeded. Along the way, Amy learns to embrace the transformation and draw strength from it. An important message from her work is that parents learn new skills when raising their children and bring a dynamic kind of knowledge to the workplace because of this experience.

At the center of Amy’s book is the idea that if she can develop greater self-knowledge and master new skills, others can too. We can change the world. And her suggestions for how workplaces can do this are clear:

1. Model from the top: Show that caring is valued by company leadership.

2. Provide equal parental leave for all parents.

3. Provide miscarriage leave.

4. Provide caregiver and bereavement leave.

5. Be thoughtful about supporting parents and caregivers returning from leave.

6. Don’t assume a one-size-fits-all approach will work.

7. Stay attuned to your caregivers’ work experience.

8. Establish Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

9. Intentionally recruit and hire caregivers.

10. Have a company-wide policy enabling stigma-free flexible work arrangements.

Finally, Amy’s book describes the process of creating a space where other female (and male) entrepreneurs, working to change the world for women, could co-exist in solidarity — it’s called FamTech. Her description of these women, and the support and engagement they provided, made me realize that this was the type of group I needed to be surrounded by, where women can admit:

“I’ve founded and run successful ventures before. But this is my first time running a business with a deeply personal mission. And it takes a much greater toll on me, because I’m deeply invested in it.”

Amy’s book ends with hope, of course! She exudes grace and hope on every page. She writes:

I hope you hear the resonance of the message I’ve poured into these pages.

Yes! I cheered in reply.

I hope something I’ve shared has touched a tender place within you in need of companionship.

Yes! I cheered in reply.

I hope you know you are not alone and I hope you feel called to action.

Yes! I cheered in reply.

You are part of a much bigger story that needs you.

Thank you! I cheered in reply.

Dr. Jacqueline Kerr is a behavior-change specialist, working mom, and burnout survivor. Her inner critic is a witch who she has recently befriended. Her inner mentor is a writer.