What Do I Tell My Daughter? by Katie Trexler Review: The Choices We Make—and What They Cost Us

There are certain questions in life that don't really have answers. Certain choices we make that may never feel "right".

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Should you stay home with your kids if you can? Should you keep working? Maybe you should you prioritize your career while you're young? Should you lean into motherhood while your children are little? What happens if you make the "right" choice and still aren't happy?

And perhaps the hardest question of all: How do you know which version of yourself you'll wish you'd chosen 10 or 20 years from now?

Those are the kinds of questions at the heart of Katie Trexler's memoir, What Do I Tell My Daughter?: Hard-won Wisdoms for Tomorrow's Women. And they're exactly what made this book so interesting to me.

What Is What Do I Tell My Daughter? About?

Katie Trexler seemingly had everything she'd worked toward: a successful career as a television news anchor, twins she adored, a marriage, and a life that looked pretty idyllic from the outside.

It's the question underneath it: What do we tell our daughters about the choices we made when there was never a perfect choice available to us?

The Part of This Book That Really Stuck With Me about the Choices We Make

One thing I've thought about increasingly as I've gotten older is how many major life decisions women are expected to make. We even have to make them without having nearly enough information to understand their consequences.

We make decisions about careers, marriage, children, childcare, finances, where we're going to live, and whose career takes priority. And sometimes we don't realize what a particular choice cost us until years later.

That's something Trexler is remarkably candid about.

She doesn't sanitize the resentment or the what-ifs. She doesn't pretend that loving your children automatically makes every sacrifice you make for them easy—or that choosing your family means you stop caring about the person you were before motherhood.

I appreciated that. Because motherhood can be wonderful and consuming at exactly the same time. You can be enormously grateful for your children and still miss parts of your old life.

You can choose something willingly and later wonder whether you should have chosen differently. Those things can coexist.

Motherhood Isn't the Only Identity We're Allowed to Have

This is probably the theme that resonated with me most. There is an enormous amount of cultural messaging around motherhood that essentially boils down to this idea that a "good" mother should be willing to sacrifice herself.

Her time.

Her body.

Her career.

Her sleep.

Her ambitions.

Her hobbies.

Her financial independence.

Her identity.

And many of those sacrifices happen so gradually that you don't necessarily recognize them as sacrifices while they're happening. You're simply doing what needs to be done, you make those choices.

Until one day you look around and wonder: Wait. Where did I go? Trexler's experience is obviously her own, but that question feels much bigger than one woman's story.

This Isn't Really a Book About Choosing Career Over Motherhood

I think that's an important distinction. I didn't walk away from What Do I Tell My Daughter? thinking the lesson was that women shouldn't stay home with their children or shouldn't make sacrifices for their families.

Quite the opposite. The more interesting takeaway is that women deserve to make those decisions with their eyes open. There are costs associated with almost every path and every choice we make.

Working while raising children can mean missing things you desperately wish you could attend. Leaving the workforce can mean losing income, professional momentum, financial independence, confidence, or a part of your identity you didn't realize mattered quite so much.

There isn't a magical third option where everything fits perfectly. And perhaps that's why Trexler's question is such a good one.

What do we tell our daughters?

Maybe we tell them that there isn't one correct way to build a life. Maybe we tell them to pay attention when a decision requires them to make themselves smaller.

Or maybe we teach them that changing their minds isn't failure. And maybe we remind them that caring for the people they love shouldn't require permanently abandoning themselves.

What I Appreciated About Katie Trexler's Approach Toward The Choices We Make

Trexler could have written this story from the comfortable distance of hindsight and wrapped everything into a neat lesson about empowerment. She doesn't.

Instead, she lets some of the mess remain messy. There are decisions that made sense at the time and look different years later. There are consequences she couldn't have anticipated. And yes, there are moments of resentment alongside genuine love.

That vulnerability is ultimately what makes the book work. The structure reinforces that idea, too, with reflections directed toward her daughter that turn Trexler's experiences into something larger than autobiography.

It becomes a conversation between generations. Not "here's what I did, so you should do this instead."

More like: Here's what I learned. I hope knowing it gives you more information when it's your turn to choose.

And I think there's something incredibly valuable about that.

Who Should Read What Do I Tell My Daughter?

Despite the title, I don't think you need to have a daughter to get something out of this book.

You don't even necessarily need to be a mother.

This is a book for women thinking about who they are outside of the roles they occupy.

It's particularly relevant if you're navigating motherhood and career decisions, reconsidering choices you made years ago, rebuilding after a major life change, or simply wondering whether the version of success you once imagined still fits the person you've become.

It's also the kind of book I can see sparking conversations between mothers and daughters—not because Trexler has figured out the perfect answer, but because she is willing to ask the uncomfortable questions.

Final Thoughts on The Choices We Make

Maybe the biggest thing I took away from What Do I Tell My Daughter? is that we don't owe the next generation a story in which we made all the right decisions.

We owe them honesty. We can tell our daughters about the things we're proud of and the things we wish we'd done differently.

And, we can tell them about the choices that worked beautifully and the ones that cost more than we expected. We can remind them that choosing a path doesn't mean they're obligated to stay on it forever.

There are very few perfect decisions in adulthood.

But there is something powerful about looking honestly at the life you've built, recognizing where you've lost pieces of yourself along the way, and deciding that you are allowed to go looking for them again.

What Do I Tell My Daughter?: Hard-won Wisdoms for Tomorrow's Women by Katie Trexler is out now.

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