Emma Grede is a British American entrepreneur, founding partner of SKIMS and Good American, known for ranking on lists like Forbes’ Richest Self-Made Women, and building culturally influential brands at the intersection of fashion, inclusivity, and modern consumer behavior.

Most recently, she’s launched her debut book, Start with Yourself, a collection of her perspectives on taking radical ownership of your mindset, standards, and decisions as the starting point for building a successful career, business, and life.

During a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Emma Grede’s comments on being a “3-hour mom” have gone viral and been met with a range of backlash as critics call her:

• emotionally detached
• harmful
• rooted in privilege
• dismissive of what children really need
• a dangerous message for modern motherhood

I’ve been really captured by this hot topic and lately, been giving a lot of thought to this conversation through my own lens as a working mother- and a daughter of a working mother. 
My mother was a licensed veterinarian in Cuba. A researcher. Highly regarded in her field. When we left Cuba for the U.S., her credentials did not transfer. She and my father started out at Pizza Hut. They took English classes at night. 

I was five years old. 

While they were in those classes, I stayed with my grandparents, learning English the way many Cuban kids did. I watched Disney classics on repeat until the words finally stuck. I spent early mornings at daycare, sometimes there by 6 am. 

My mother was a “3-hour mom”. And she had her reasons for choosing that path.  

The conversation around Emma Grede’s comments are centered at the intersection of a mother’s choices and their consequences. And there’s a lot of discussion around the consequence aspect.

So, what does it actually feel like to be the child of a “3-hour mom”? What are the consequences of choosing that path?

My mother worked her way back into veterinary medicine without a U.S. license, taking exam after exam to rebuild what she had already earned once.

But she picked me up from school every single day. She showed up for lunch whenever her schedule allowed. 

I still remember coming downstairs some mornings to find her already at the table, helping me with whatever I hadn’t finished the night before. She helped me with everything, even when she didn’t fully understand the material herself. Like the geography map she helped me finish in 3rd grade. And the Princess Diana presentation she helped me put together in 4th grade. I earned accolades for that project. I have never forgotten that she made that happen.

I also remember her studying late into the night for her boards. 

For years, I knew what she was working toward, even as a kid. I understood the weight of it. And the day she earned her U.S. license was one of the happiest days of my life.

Not just hers. Mine. Because I had been there for all of it. She built it. And I watched.

I now know what those late nights feel like from the other side. I know the mental weight, the doubt, the identity loss that comes with sacrifice.

I got pregnant during my first year of law school. I navigated the rest of it as a mother, with real help from my parents and in-laws, because it truly took all of us. 

My husband worked over 100 hours a week that first year. I studied late. I questioned everything. I disappeared from every room I used to own. The organizations. The leadership roles. The version of myself that had time to show up everywhere. 

There was no balance. Balance was not even a concept I had access to.

The image for this piece is from my law school graduation. My daughter is placing my cap on my head. That is the whole story, in one frame. 

This is what building looks like when it is real. Not polished. Not balanced. Just true.

I am still building. My firm. My brand. Figuring out what both of those even mean at the same time. Balance still does not look symmetrical from the outside. It probably never will. And I am making peace with the fact that it might look completely different a year from now, depending on where the business goes, what my kids need, and what season I am in.

People ask me constantly how I do it all. How I balance it all. I get that question more than almost any other. But my kids are not aware of that question being asked. They are not tuned into that noise. They just see me show up- for my clients, for my family, for myself- whatever is needed, when it is needed. And I think that is exactly the point.

This week everyone suddenly had opinions about Emma Grede. 

She said the uncomfortable thing. That building something real requires sacrifice. That work-life balance in the early seasons is more myth than reality. That a soft life is the reward, not the standard. 

The backlash was immediate.

Here is what struck me. A man saying the exact same things would be called driven- a visionary. A woman says that, and suddenly, we are debating whether she is a good mother.

What I keep coming back to is this: the loudest voices questioning Emma Grede are not men. They are women. 

That should give us all pause. 

I watched the same thing happen in a book club years ago over a fictional character. The women who struggled most with Elizabeth Zott in Lessons in Chemistry were not struggling with her choices. 

They were struggling with what her choices implied about their own. 

When someone confidently pursues a different path, it can feel like an indictment of yours, even when it is not. It never was. We cannot ask for sisterhood and then reserve it only for the women who choose the way we choose.

The assumption underneath all of it is that an ambitious woman is taking something from her children. That the choice to build costs them something irreparable.

I am the data point that says otherwise. 

I was that kid. I was in the 6 am daycare. I watched my mother study while the rest of the house slept. I watched her rebuild something in a country that would not recognize what she had already earned, in a field that required her to prove herself all over again. 

And I did not grow up feeling robbed. I grew up with a blueprint.

What I absorbed was not absence. It was evidence. 

Evidence that women build things. That it is hard and worth it. That you can show up for your children and still be in pursuit of something larger than the moment you are in.

The freedom worth fighting for was never the freedom to do more. It was the freedom to choose deliberately and stop apologizing for it. 

Stay home and be exceptional at it. Build a career and be exceptional at it. Build an empire and be exceptional at it. Change your mind when the season changes. Do it on your terms without owing anyone an explanation.

I wrote most of this article while my husband drove us to my son’s rock band show and later to my daughter’s musical theatre performance. This is what doing it all actually looks like. 

You figure it out. You do what you can- and what you truly want. And when you can’t, you ask for help. You let people step in. 

There is no shame in that. There never was.

I showed my mom this article before I submitted it for publishing. After the initial emotions, she immediately remembered an essay I wrote in high school that I had completely forgotten about. She ran to get it and as I read it over, I was in shock.

The story I told at sixteen and the story I shared in this piece are the same story.
I think that is the whole point.

My kids are watching me now, the way I watched my mother. I do not yet know exactly what they are absorbing. But I know what I absorbed, and I know who I became because of what she modeled.

That is enough to keep going.

Lidice F. Porro, Esq. is the founder of LFPorro Law, PLLC, a transactional law firm built for healthcare and wellness private practice owners across Florida. She grew up watching her parents build something from nothing and learned firsthand what it means to need the right people in your corner. That experience never left her.

Today, she works with clinicians, practice founders, and service-based professionals who want their legal foundation to support their growth instead of getting in the way of it. She is an active member of her professional community and is committed to giving back to the next generation of students and emerging professionals.

Her mission has never changed: she refuses to let people lose what they have built because nobody told them what to protect.

Connect with Lidice HERE.