What started as a book is now a national movement.
In America, becoming a parent exacerbates and amplifies every other inequity—of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and ability—especially in the workforce. Did you know that the Motherhood Penalty accounts for 80% of the gender wage gap? Or, that in 2022, there are 1 million fewer moms in the workforce than then were pre-pandemic? Or that if we had gender parity in the workforce, the U.S. GDP would increase by 26%?
At The Fifth Trimester, we apply what we’ve learned from thousands of new mothers to support all working caregivers: dads, those with eldercare needs, grandparents, spouses. From startups to Fortune 100s, your kitchen counter to Congress, we help individuals and organizations make sustainable, humane progress that isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s economically vital.
Photo by Michelle Rose Photo
About the founder
Lauren Smith Brody is the founder of The Fifth Trimester movement and consulting, which supports all working parents and caregivers to advance women’s leadership and build gender equity in the workforce.
The Fifth Trimester has been featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and on Good Morning America, and Brody has been a featured speaker at companies and organizations across the Fortune 500, with a focus on tech, finance, and big law. Brody’s book, The Fifth Trimester: The Working Mom’s Guide to Style, Sanity, and Success After Baby (Doubleday/Anchor), was a simultaneous triple best-seller in the Amazon categories of motherhood, women and business, and cultural anthropology.
As an entrepreneur who can’t quit journalism, Brody writes regularly about the intersection of business and parenthood for, among others, The New York Times, Slate, and Elle, and pens (okay, types) monthly advice columns for Parade Media and the children’s brand Maisonette.
And as a journalist who can’t quit activism, she is also a co-founder of the Chamber of Mothers, a national nonprofit movement focusing America’s attention on mothers’ rights. Grateful to call on her reporting skills, contacts, and messaging expertise, she is currently advising Health and Human Services and the White House Office of Management and Business as they build immediate and long term solutions to the 2022 formula shortage.
A longtime leader in the women’s magazine industry, Brody was previously the executive editor of Glamour magazine where she ran the brand’s Women of the Year Awards honoring such luminaries as Dr. Maya Angelou, Hillary Clinton, and Serena Williams. Raised in Ohio, Texas, and Georgia, she now lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and a joyfully neurotic rescue dog.