#CommunityInParenthood
The Nested Institute
We are a nonprofit research institute out to tackle the real issues impacting families. We do the research that's chronically underfunded and desperately needed.
Studies on mothers are severely underfunded, and non-birthing caregivers are almost entirely overlooked. We're committed to filling these gaps and making every caregiver's experience visible. Here's what we're doing:
Comprehensive Research: We conduct rigorous studies that uncover the real struggles families face, from perinatal mental health to the teen mental health crisis.
Advocacy for Policy Change: We use our findings to advocate for the transformation of family-focused policies at every level.
Inclusive Approach: We’re committed to ensuring that all voices are heard, including those of non-birthing caregivers, dads, and partners.
Eve Rodsky: Fair Play Policy Institute
The Fair Play Policy Institute provides programming and grants to non-profit organizations working on improving how we care for each other. In so doing, the Institute uses tools to help individuals and communities build support systems and raises awareness about “care movement” policies and programs to support caregivers, such as employer leadership, unpaid labor, caregiving, paid family leave, and robust childcare options.
After seven years of research and development, Eve Rodsky introduced Fair Play, a game-changing system to help partners share what it takes to run a house and family more equitably. Eve Rodsky wrote the book Fair Play in 2019, soon followed by a podcast and the FAIR PLAY documentary, to amplify the importance of the care movement.
The Fifth Trimester
Lauren Smith Brody is the CEO and founder of The Fifth Trimester, which powers gender equality in the workforce with speaking engagements, 1:1 coaching, management training, and a suite of consulting services that support working parents and caregivers.
Lauren’s work grew out of her bestselling book The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom’s Guide to Style, Sanity, and Success After Baby (Doubleday), written in the sunset of her first career as a media executive (RIP, print magazines). These days, she brings her research and expertise frequently to the national media and her consulting clients include a broad spectrum of businesses in tech, big law, education, media, and finance -- as well as a handful of intrepid individual moms who use her help to make change within their organizations.
Lauren is also a co-founder of the Chamber of Mothers, a national nonpartisan nonprofit that mobilizes Americans around public policy solutions for parents, bringing local-chapter advocacy to Capitol Hill. Raised in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, she lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and a highly-medicated rescue dog.
Nancy Reddy
The Good Mother Myth uses Nancy’s own story of a rough transition into early motherhood alongside research and reporting to uncover the shoddy science beneath so many of our bad ideas about how to be a good mom.
She looked at the midcentury psychologists and psychoanalysts like Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, D. W. Winnicott, and Mary Ainsworth whose research has shaped a lot of the expectations for mothers that are still with us today.
It’s her hope that the book can provide comfort and companionship to new parents struggling, as she did, under the weight of our impossible and contradictory mythologies of motherhood—and point a way forward to a new conception of caregiving that doesn’t rely on one perfect mom.
Brito Baby Lab
The Infant Studies of Language and Neurocognitive Development (ISLAND) Lab, led by Dr. Natalie Brito, explores how the home environment and early social interactions shape children's brain and behavioral development.
The overall goal of our research is to better understand how to best support caregivers and create environments that foster healthy child development.
Current studies examine the influence of caregiver mental health, parent-child interactions, and social policies (e.g., paid family leave) on attention, memory, and socioemotional skills in infancy and toddlerhood.