Welcome to: Raising Her Voice!

A New Name, A Wider Lens

After more than two years (or four if you count my pre-Substack days) as The Feminist Parent, this newsletter has a new name: Raising Her Voice.

I’ve long wanted a title that better captures the full spirit of what I write here—parenting, yes, but also cultural commentary, gender analysis, and what it means to be a girl or woman in a world that still too often asks us to shrink ourselves. I gave the newsletter a little makeover (Canva and I spent a very intimate weekend together), but don’t worry: the heart of it remains the same.

When this all started in 2021, I was blogging on a site I created called The Feminist Parent, born from my passion for helping girls navigate a sexist world that insisted gender inequality was a thing of the past. (Also: designing a website was a great way to procrastinate on my book proposal.)

By April 2023, with my proposal complete, agent secured, and a publisher on board, I moved my writing (and my tiny following) here to Substack—hoping to build an audience to support the launch of my book, Sexism & Sensibility, about raising girls to recognize and resist the misogyny that chips away at their sense of self. At the time, The Feminist Parent still fit.

Now, just two years later, the world feels markedly more sexist. The backlash we’re living through is breathtaking—both blatant and insidious—and it’s messing even more with girls’ sense of who they are and who they’re allowed to become. I’m often asked if I wrote my book predicting Trump’s comeback or the wave of hostility aimed at girls and women. No, to Trump. But yes—absolutely—to the backlash. That pattern was already unfolding in the wake of #MeToo, when cultural discomfort with women’s rising voices triggered pushback, confusion, and fresh contradictions. When my book came out it felt important. Now, it feels urgent.

As the world has shifted, so has this newsletter. It still explores parenting from a feminist perspective—but it has become so much more, too. Because parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t raise a daughter without bumping up against the cultural forces shaping her world—and yours. And you can’t confront those forces on your child’s behalf without reckoning with how they’ve shaped you, too.

This is a place to think through all of that: how the world is changing, how it’s impacting women and girls both practically and psychologically, how gender norms and outright sexism play out in our families, our politics, our relationships. And, if you’re partnered with a man or raising a boy, how patriarchy shows up there too.

Some of my most-read essays—
• How To Save Your Daughter $300K
• Women Bound and Gagged on Holiday Cards: Welcome to Peace on Earth
• She Said What?! The Best Responses to Sexist Remarks
—aren’t just about girls. They’re about what it means to navigate the world as a woman, and how we push back—quietly or loudly—against the forces that try to diminish us.

I love that Raising Her Voice speaks to all of that.

It’s speaks to helping our daughters develop voices that are strong, clear, and fully their own. It speaks to women using our voices—whether we’re speaking truth to power, telling stories that matter, expressing justified anger, or simply asserting our needs without apology. It’s about agency and resistance and care.

At a time when so many female voices and choices are being undermined or erased, this newsletter is my small act of rebellion—a space to speak up, think critically, and say what needs to be said. With nuance. With context. With research to back it up.

If you’ve been here a while, thank you for reading, sharing, and showing up.
If you’re new, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

P.S. If this sounds like a newsletter someone you know would enjoy, please consider forwarding it their way—or gifting them a subscription. Words travel farther when they’re shared.