You are not failing at family life—the system is failing you. MaK Wangsness, a marketer and mom who has lived through food insecurity, financial aid, and parenthood with zero paid leave, launches Carrying Care with a clear mission: expose what caregiving in America really costs and why so many families are left holding everything together alone.
You are not failing at family life—the system is failing you. MaK Wangsness, a marketer and mom who has lived through food insecurity, financial aid, and parenthood with zero paid leave, launches Carrying Care with a clear mission: expose what caregiving in America really costs and why so many families are left holding everything together alone.
Drawing on six years leading a workplace community for parents and caregivers, MaK has heard hundreds of stories from new parents, school-age parents, people caring for aging relatives, and families supporting kids with special needs. That experience shapes a podcast and community built to examine the policies, workplace norms, and benefit structures that affect daily life—and to center the real families living inside those decisions.
You’ll hear why the mental math of PTO, daycare pickup, doctor appointments, and deadlines is not a personal failure, but a design problem. MaK makes the case that caregiving stress is not about doing it wrong—it’s about operating inside systems that were never built for the people doing the work.
We’ll explore:
- Why paid leave, childcare, and workplace culture are inseparable from family well-being
- How support systems can either stabilize working families or quietly break them
- What MaK learned from years of listening to caregivers across every stage of family life
- Why the conversation has to move from individual guilt to structural change
This podcast is for parents, caregivers -- anyone who has ever felt like they’re barely keeping up without a village -- and the people who are building and creating those villages. It’s also for listeners who want to understand the bigger picture behind family policy and what it actually takes to build a world that supports caregiving instead of punishing it.
Carrying Care launches September 15th. If you care about families, workplace reality, and the systems shaping both, this is the episode to start with.
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