Fresh Take: Kate Rope, STRONG AS A GIRL

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood

Comedy, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amy and Margaret speak with Kate Rope, award-winning journalist and author of STRONG AS A GIRL: Your Guide to Raising Girls Who Know, Stand Up For, and Take Care of Themselves. Together, they unpack the unique challenges and opportunities facing today’s girls—from body image and social media to perfectionism, mental health, and the pressure to be “kind” at their own expense. Kate shares practical strategies for raising confident, resilient daughters who trust their inner voice, understand consent, honor their needs, and navigate a world filled with mixed messages. She offers insights on early messaging around appearance, the rise of eating disorders, how to parent from hope—not fear—and why making mistakes (and repairing them) is one of parenting’s greatest strengths. Here's where you can find Kate: https://katerope.com @kateropewriter on IG https://katerope.substack.com Buy STRONG AS A GIRL: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781250904775 We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at ⁠www.monarchmoney.com/FRESH Ready to raise money-smart kids? Start now with your first month FREE at acornsearly.com/FRESH! Head to GigSalad.com and book some awesome talent for your next party, and let them know that What Fresh Hell sent you. Raising strong girls, parenting daughters, Kate Rope interview, Strong As a Girl book, girls and body image, eating disorder awareness in teens, parenting from hope not fear, empowering young girls, girls and social media impact, teaching girls self-advocacy, mental health for teen girls, parenting girls through anxiety, raising confident daughters, consent and girls, developmental challenges in girls, girls and perfectionism, resilience in girls, parenting advice for mothers of girls, supporting girls’ self-esteem, raising girls in the modern world Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell laughing in the face of motherhood.
0:06.9	This is Margaret.
0:07.9	And this is Amy.
0:08.7	Today we're talking to Kate Rope.
0:10.9	She is an award-winning freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Life, and CNN.com.
0:18.7	She lives in Atlanta with their husband and two daughters. Kate is the author of
0:22.8	Strong as a Mother, How to Stay Healthy, Happy and Most Importantly, Sane from Pregnancy to Parenting,
0:28.8	and a New Book, which we'll be talking about today, Strong as a Girl, your guide to raising
0:33.8	girls who know, stand up for, and take care of themselves. Welcome, Kate.
0:38.9	Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited by this book.
0:43.2	And I want to quote your first line because I loved it. You said, congratulations to anyone raising a girl right now.
0:48.7	This is the most exciting time to be doing it. And I was like, wow, what a refreshing and unexpected first line for a book
0:57.4	about raising girls today. So tell us, why do you think that this is the best time to be raising
1:02.2	girls? I mean, I think any time is a great time to be raising a girl. I love girls. So that's number
1:06.5	one. Let's just put that out there. Two, I don't like all the fear mongering that happens around raising girls.
1:12.3	I do think, yeah, there are some pitfalls you have to watch out for. And then my book is all about
1:16.6	building a foundation with your girl so she can weather like those seismic shifts when they come.
1:21.3	But girls are seeing an incredible amount of female empowerment, female leadership from like Greta
1:27.3	Tunberg to Kamala Harris on the
1:29.3	campaign trail to body positive TikTok reels. They're seeing in real time women and girls doing
1:36.2	pretty much everything. And the other part is I interviewed, I don't know how many, but I did
1:42.6	focus groups with girls across the country for this book.
	...

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