Welcome to Issue 68 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about telling better business stories. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

Hello Reader,

While disheartened, I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn the real reason so many young people are not having kids.

It’s not, as studies have suggested, the cost of living, climate anxiety, career tradeoffs, or the increasingly muddy vision we have about the future of humanity. Yes, all of those things play a role. But they’re all the external reasons that no amount of government funding or other incentive-based initiatives to increase the birth rate can solve.

The real reason fewer and fewer people are opting into parenthood is because the bar for parenting has been set so impossibly high.

And I believe my generation—the millennials—are partially to blame for this.

My younger brother, a plastic surgeon who has made more than enough money to comfortably provide for a family, has told me more than once that he’s terrified of having kids because he doesn’t want to “fuck them up.”

He’s been married for two years and just bought a five-bedroom house by the beach. And he has no plans to fill it.

While I keep trying to convince him that parenting is awesome and it’s his duty as my brother to provide me and my two daughters with some adorable baby cousins, I completely get where he’s coming from. I even take some responsibility.

In my first two years postpartum, I was obsessed with being a "good mother."

I was intent on making sure my first born was fed right, slept right, and stimulated enough so that her little brain and personality developed right. I subjected myself to all manner of things I had little interest in doing in an effort to give her all the things she needed. I signed up for mommy-and-me music classes, messy play groups, baby yoga, and spent the rest of the day socializing her at the park like a puppy.

In the process, I became someone I hardly recognized. I felt a little miserable, often bored and extremely discontented to myself.

Then one day, I came across Jennifer Senior’s book on parenting titled All Joy and No Fun that shook me into a greater state of awareness. I never actually read the book, but the title alone told me everything I needed to know. It dawned on me that way I was approaching motherhood felt full of meaning, and also extremely hard to enjoy.

But it wasn't just that concept that started opening my eyes to the trap of modern motherhood. As a result of all those classes I attended and time I spent at the park, I found myself a little group of friends who seemed to be on the same page. We all shared a similar language around parenting because we were reading the same books and following the same influencers on Instagram.

And just like all those perfect mommy bloggers, I could tell that while we all seemed kind of fine on the outside, we were all dying a little on the inside. The closer we got (and the more wine we drank), the more we revealed our true selves and feelings about it all.

It became painfully obvious that the high bar set on parenting—and mothers specifically—made all of us feel like we were falling short somewhere.

For one mother, it was a sense of shame over the boredom. While she adored her baby, she loathed the monotony of caretaking and could not wait to go back to work. Another one felt extreme guilt over her choice to formula feed because she didn’t want saggy breasts. And one felt like a huge failure because she couldn’t get her baby on a regular sleep schedule. She eventually caved and paid some sleep consultant thousands of dollars to do the job for her, which made her feel like an even bigger failure.

Disclosure about all of this, however, only felt safe within the group. But I knew that if we were all feeling this way, so many mothers and fathers must be experiencing the same. And we all just putting on a big act.

Instead of simply experiencing parenthood and making it our own, we were performing a version of it we believed we should be in order to be "good" at the job.

And for me, the act eventually got old.

A Good Lesson

This push to perform the most acceptable version of ourselves certainly doesn’t start or end with motherhood.

Whether it’s in parenting, relationships, or work, many of us have been conditioned to believe that in order to be accepted, loved, known, and chosen, we have to act in a certain way. So, we craft these personas that we put on like costumes for the various roles we play.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in our professional lives—especially as we present ourselves online.

In order to be taken seriously and get paid, we're pretty sure we should present the best, most polished versions of ourselves at all times. We don’t talk about grief, shame, loneliness, anxiety or confusion—we save that stuff for our close circles. We're certain, confident and competent at all times.

But that's just how robots work.

We now have plenty of data showing that when people feel seen, heard, and understood, they do better work. They stay longer, care more about the work, and contribute more often and enthusiastically. The result is higher performance and lower burnout across the board.

Even Google, before it became so bureaucratic, ran a study called Project Aristotle, which found that the highest-performing teams weren’t the most experienced, but the ones where people felt safe enough to be real with each other.

The upshot is that when people feel like they have to package themselves into something more curated they eventually disengage.

Makes sense, right? What doesn’t make sense is this:

We leave those environments, and then recreate them for ourselves. We curate and polish everything we put out into the world. We default to what we think we should sound like. We force ourselves to be consistent, visible, and valuable at all times.

Rarely, if ever, is the goal to really be seen.

Now, that works for some of us for a time. But for me, and the people I work with, something starts to break. We disengage from the work because we’ve forced ourselves to always be on in that corporate way we’ve been conditioned to be, regardless of what’s going on in our lives.

Eventually, we make it so that it’s all no joy and all no fun.

Just this week, a friend who runs her own business messaged me saying, “I’m just so tired of my own shit. I can’t sell anymore.” Another admitted that she’s bored of selling and can’t stand anything she’s writing.

But I don’t think it’s the selling they’re tired of. It’s the performing.

Because the same principle that drives commitment at work applies to many of us in our own work. And that’s simply the fact that you’re more invested when you’re able to be yourself.

When you feel like you have to manufacture a voice, a persona, or a version of yourself that fits the mold of what professional should sound like, you lose your own buy-in. And without buy-in, everything feels heavier and more forced. You start to resent the very thing you’re trying to build.

But when you allow yourself to be seen—not fully exposed or by oversharing everything, but telling the truth about your experience, your thinking, and your perspective—you create alignment. The work starts to feel like an extension of you, not a performance for others.

And that’s where the shift starts to happen from constantly selling to becoming someone who attracts opportunities by being known.

But you can’t become known without allowing yourself to be seen.

A Good Takeaway

While I still forget sometimes, I've accepted that any time I try to perform a version of myself, it never leads to the kind of connection or enjoyment that makes whatever it is I’m focusing on feel sustainable.

It's been nearly 11 years since I became a new mother. And I can honestly now say that I really enjoy the job. (On most days.)

Since becoming more honest with myself about what I need from this role and how I want to show up, I've had so much more joy and fun. Even though some of the things I do might not be socially acceptable (for instance, I let them watch loads of TV on the weekend), my kids still feel happy and loved. And I feel like a good enough mother.

Beyond motherhood, I see a huge opportunity right now for us to redefine all of the roles we play.

In nearly every realm of our lives, we’ve entered this strange in-between moment where none of the old rules we as a society have agreed upon for generations seem to apply anymore. But the new rules haven’t been clearly defined yet.

So that mean we get to decide how we want to show up.

For some of us, it might look like continuing to perform a version of ourselves that feels safe. For others, myself included, it’s ditching the personas and showing up as we are so that we can remain engaged in the work for the long run— shame, guilt, grief, warts and all.

The choice is ultimately ours.

Yes, the second option is a little uncomfortable at times. And yes, it can feel risky. But it also feels real, meaningful, joyful and so very fun.

A Few Good Resources

1. If you're a solo business owner, there's a free summit happening this week with all sorts of amazing resources and masterclasses. I'll be speaking on crafting your brand narrative.
2. ​I love this guide that Stacy Eleckzo shared in my community to help you translate your story onto a website that converts.
3. ​A father on the price we pay for meaning.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee