In 2008, I wrote a feature article for Inc. Magazine about the effects of business on families, specifically our business, Stonyfield Yogurt, on our family. The article was brutally honest about some of the things we experienced during those early difficult startup years. After the article appeared the magazine was snowed with mail. At which point the then Editor in Chief, Jane Berentsen, called me and asked me to start contributing a regular column to the magazine because she said that she felt I had really hit on something important. That was how my column “Balancing Acts” was launched. In the column I looked with some detail at the effect of business on families. And I expanded on those topics in a book that I came out with in 2012 called, “For Better Or For Work, A Survival Guide For Entrepreneurs and Their Families.” I’m Meg Cadoux Hirshberg. And I’m a freelance writer.

During the course of my research for my book and for my columns I interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, spouses and some children of entrepreneurs about the challenges they faced when trying to balance family with an entrepreneurial business. It is my hope that this series will foster some of these same conversations in your family.