Leaving the Ladder Down
Dolly Jones
More than 200 women describe how they combined work and motherhood. Less a formula, more a library of lived experience.
Book reviews
Good ideas don't always come from parenting books.
Sometimes the most useful perspective on working parenthood comes from a book about leadership, ambition, time management or someone else's life experiences.
This collection brings together books that have influenced how I think about careers, family life and personal decisions.
Each review includes a Working Parenthood perspective: an idea, question or practical lesson that might be worth borrowing for your own circumstances.
Read what resonates. Borrow what helps. Make it your own.
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I Know How She Does It
Laura Vanderkam
A data-led look at 1,001 days of real time logs, and a case for judging your life by the week rather than by one difficult day.
My Life in Full
Indra Nooyi
A CEO memoir that keeps the trade-offs visible, and argues that caregiving is part of the infrastructure that makes careers possible.
The Squiggly Career
Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
An alternative to the career ladder: strengths, values, confidence and networks as the real building blocks of progress.
The Mother of All Jobs
Christine Armstrong
Honest about the gap between modern work and the structures around family life, without blaming personal organisation.
Becoming
Michelle Obama
A personal account of navigating marriage, motherhood and professional identity as one partner's career becomes increasingly demanding.
Lean In
Sheryl Sandberg
More than a decade after it was published, Lean In remains one of the defining books about women, ambition and work.
Lean Out
Marissa Orr
If Lean In asks women to own their ambition and step forward, Lean Out asks a different question: what if the problem is not that women need to change, but that workplaces do?
The Blend
Tobi Asare
The Blend is a practical guide to one of the least theoretical questions in working parenthood: how do you actually make work and family life function together?
A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir
Jacinda Ardern
An account of navigating motherhood alongside extraordinary professional responsibility — and building family arrangements when life refuses to follow a convenient timeline.
How to Fail
Elizabeth Day
A perspective on the unexpected turns that reshape careers, relationships and family plans, including the often-invisible challenges of the fertility journey.
The Let Them Theory
Mel Robbins
The Let Them Theory is built around a deceptively simple idea: stop spending so much energy trying to control what other people think, say or do, and bring that attention back to the choices that are actually yours.
Inspired by someone else's story? Time to explore your own.
The Working Parenthood guides help you apply structured thinking to the career, family and time decisions you're navigating.