Between school pickups, city council meetings, client appointments and late-night problem-solving, motherhood often unfolds in the spaces between everything else. This Mother’s Day, Brooklyn Paper spoke with three local moms — a politician, a restaurateur and a salon owner — about the realities of raising children while building careers and creating community.
Balancing family and politics
Council Member Alexa Avilés is the proud mother of two daughters, ages 20 and 17.
The District 38 lawmaker told Brooklyn Paper that when she first ran for office in 2021, her older daughter, then 15, was skeptical but supportive, thinking it was “kind of cool” that her mom was running for political office. Her younger daughter, meanwhile, was mortified when Avilés tabled outside her school and realized her mother was embarking on a highly public-facing journey.
“At one point, [she] told me that she walked into her classroom and the teacher was doing something about local politics, and my face and her baby pictures popped up on the internet. She was so embarrassed,” Avilés said, noting that she tries to maintain a healthy distance between public duty and private life, though her daughters still pay attention to her work.
“I don’t bring them to public events very often, in fact, quite rarely do they come out with me,” Avilés said. “So sometimes I think, I’m doing all those things over there, and they’re not paying attention. But they’ll see me on TV, or they’ll see something on social media, and they’ll make comments about it that are affirming and supportive.”
Like many parents, balancing quality family time and a career remains a work in progress, Avilés said, especially when emergencies arise in her district and compete with time spent with her daughters.
“So I think some days I balance it better than others. It’s kind of a work in progress, like all parenting; some days we do better than other days,” Avilés said, adding that although her daughters are older, they still need her, even if those needs have changed with age. “Most teenagers are not trying to be around their parents, but I think what I realized is that they just need you differently.”
There have been moments when Avilés had to choose between her responsibilities as a lawmaker and as a parent, including deciding whether to join her daughters on college tours or fulfill legislative duties.
“I try my best to meet both. And so it means that maybe I wasn’t on the visit with her, but I’m doing everything else,” she said. “So I think what all people do is like, you try to make the best of it. You try to reaffirm that you know you’re doing the best you can, and it’s not going to be perfect, that’s for sure. Some days I feel guilty, and some days I’m super proud, and some days I’m not even thinking about it because I’m worried about a sewer.”
Part of parenthood is learning how to multitask, Avilés said, a skill she considers an asset in politics. Motherhood, she added, has made her more empathetic to the struggles of working people and reinforced the need to expand educational infrastructure such as 2-K, 3-K and pre-K while examining barriers that prevent families from getting the support they need.
“Building out a system of care that dignifies the workers and the children in their care, that’s going to take a long time, because it is expensive, but I always say we have the resources in the city, it is where we choose to put those resources,” Avilés said. “When you have these social supports, in a civilized society, you build more stable, happier people, and that’s what we want. Working people deserve all those things.”
Better structural support for New York City mothers, she said, would include universal child care, pay equity, workplace accommodations, removing career barriers and addressing women’s health and wellness needs, including menopause and violence against women.
“It’s this whole person care, whole family care, and how to move towards a more caring infrastructure, as opposed to one that revolves around punitive structures,” Avilés said. “So there’s a lot to be done structurally to support us.”
To fellow parents, she offered a mantra that helps carry her through difficult days: “You’re doing great. Every day is a good day. This too shall pass.”
Balancing family and business
Leah Wiseman Fink is the mother of 12-year-old Sammy and 8-year-old Sydney.
Wiseman Fink owns a leadership coaching practice, runs a networking community called the Spark Society and, with her husband, co-owns the Williamsburg Pizza chain, which has eight locations — six in New York City and two in Omaha, Nebraska.
Wiseman Fink and her husband launched Williamsburg Pizza when they had their first child. She told Brooklyn Paper that every day was a “balancing act,” though now that her children are older and in school, her schedule has become more flexible.
“Some seasons are harder than others,” Wiseman Fink said. “Now [that] my kids are both in elementary and middle school, I pretty much have most of the day to myself. And because I’m an entrepreneur, my schedule is relatively flexible, so I can be with them in the evenings. So I actually really love that flexibility that I built into my schedule.”
Wiseman Fink said one challenge of raising children in New York City is the lack of nearby family support. Her family lives in Michigan, and growing up, her parents could rely on relatives in emergencies.
That reality, she said, makes community-building with other parents especially important.
“You become close with friends, especially those who have kids the same ages as you. You’re able to help each other out,” she said.
As Mother’s Day approaches, her advice to new moms is: “It gets easier, and then it gets harder, and then it gets easier again. And find your people, find your community. Sometimes you have to work for it, but it’s definitely worth it.”
Rubi Aguilar, owner of SALON in Williamsburg, co-parents with her 10-year-old daughter’s father on a 50/50 schedule, allowing her to plan her work around her daughter’s routine and school pickups.
“I’m trying to just organize my work schedule around her needs, like 1,010%. The weeks that I don’t have her, I’m working a lot more so that I can have that flexibility [during] the weeks that I do,” Aguilar said, adding that when her daughter was born, she didn’t have that same flexibility and was “doing it all at once.”
Aguilar told Brooklyn Paper she was “grateful” for New York City’s 3-K program, which provided affordable child care and education for her daughter. Still, she said the lack of universal paid leave in the United States remains a major barrier for parents.
“If you get sick, or your loved one gets sick, and you have to take time off work, not having that stability or a job to come back to, and losing income, is a giant barrier. The statistics are wild; it can literally lead to bankruptcy. It’s like the highest reason why Americans go bankrupt,” Aguilar said, noting that her salon advocated for the policy four years ago.
Her advice to new parents is to find community in person — at public libraries or parent networking events — rather than online.
“For me, as a hairdresser, I have this community built into my salon, and I have a lot of events for my clients and community to connect in person for this exact reason,” Aguilar said, “but I think the importance of third spaces, of coming out of our phones and literally connecting with each other and finding community face to face is what helps raise a child.”
