What do we need to understand when it comes to our kids?

I get more melancholy about the end of summer than my kids do. They love school, and started the new school year today. About my own sadness about this time of year, I know that it's largely because my kids are the ones who teach me to play, not to work all the time.

submitted by Lori
Will you ever have to prove your donor child doesn’t have a father? When I gave birth to my daughter via anonymous donor IUI in 1999, I hoped that the information regarding her father would be left blank on her birth certificate.

Thanks to Jessica for suggesting this Dixie Chicks song for anyone in the Choice Mom community looking for inspirational music about becoming a single mother.

While in London I had the pleasure of meeting a woman at the Choice Mom gathering who told me about how she had decided some time ago that she definitely would not become a single mom -- partly after reading my "Choosing Single Motherhood" book. 18 months later, however, she's back on the path. I asked her to share her story about the thinking process.

Thanks to the generosity of Choice Mom Emily, I've been able to spend a wonderful 10-day holiday in London with my kids and parents. While here I met in Coram's Field with 14 women, including Moms, Thinkers and Tryers from Belfast, Dublin, Belgium and many others in the United Kingdom. I also met with a large group of Ph.D. students in Cambridge, who were interested in the Choice Mom story.

I've been asked by some to offer comment on the study about donor-conceived kids that was released in May 2010 by the Commission on Parenthood's Future, in conjunction with the Institute of American Values.

submitted by Christy
My daughter is 2.5 years old. She is a little girl who doesn't need to ask a lot of questions, doesn't seem to need a lot of prep information, and simply adjusts at the time to whatever is happening around her. She doesn't yet ask why she doesn't have a dad, or who her donor is. But other kids are now starting to do so.

It is more important to start your donor search with selection of the right sperm bank, before identifying donor characteristics. Arm yourself with this checklist of questions to begin the process.

I'm often asked how Choice Moms handle Father's Day. And we often wonder -- especially before we have kids, or when our children are quite young -- whether they are missing out on something important by growing up without a father.

That's how much it reportedly costs to raise a child these days. That is, if you are part of a married couple with middle class income. The report indicated that the amount you spend on a child depends on what you earn. But here's what the average costs tend to be.

Lesbian and gay couples, and single women, have long been presumed by many to offer "worse" family structure for kids compared to two-parent heterosexual marriages. One new study reported in Time magazine indicates something we've long suspected. That might be a huge presumption.

Some time ago a librarian wrote to me asking that I send my various books for Choice Moms and donor-conceived families to the Library of Congress for cataloging. This stemmed out of her discovery that there are very few books about donor conception available. She compiled this list, however, of everything she had found to that point.

Susan Golombok is the Cambridge University-based researcher who did the first large-scale study of the Choice Mom community in 2008. Some of those findings are posted here. Now she's published a new report of other research into female-headed families.

May is "Money Matters" month on the website. This month we'll take a look at what we're learning and sharing, from each other and from experts, about financial matters. Starting with this week's Choice Mom query: As parents who might expect more help from our kids, but with one paycheck, how do we handle allowances?

There are several great options for creating your own storybooks for your adopted or donor conceived child. Here are some of them.

We love reading stories with our kids about non-traditional families. Here are some of the books that have been recommended by Choice Moms.

Interestingly, the most popular conversation circle at my upcoming Choice Mom Expo in Minneapolis is "Taming tantrums: yours and child," with parenting educator Denise Konen. Even 11 years into parenting, I didn't realize how important this topic is to our motherhood community. Here's one of the suggestions Denise has.

Well here it is...the public debate between a Glenn Sacks father's rights crony (Robert Franklin) and myself on PublicSquare.net. Read, laugh, seethe, comment. I actually love the opportunity to offer a rational perspective, even if my opponent has a decidedly different viewpoint. Such as Franklin's view that Choice Moms often trick men into having kids and then lie to keep them out of the child's life. Here's a synopsis, with links to the full debate.

When your uncle is also the sperm donor who helped your lesbian parents conceive, you might presume "the" conversation about your origins would be a hard one. And what happens afterward?

There are three things Choice Moms report in hindsight are their biggest regrets. What do you think they are?

Years ago, when my daughter was in kindergarten, the infamous family tree assignments started to come from school. To allow for the fact that Choice families don't have a "father's side" to fill in, we came up with our own solution.

I have talked to many experts -- including donor-conceived adults -- about the pros, cons, strengths and weaknesses of anonymous and open-identity donor conception as the method to building a family. Listen in:

We're building an audio library featuring the best of our Choosing Single Motherhood radio show and Choice Chat podcasts. You can order the first of this collection, "Choice Moms Answer the Tough Questions: Do I Have a Dad?" (formerly a CD product, available here for immediate $7 download). After you place your order, we will send you a special code for access here:

Once upon a time, doctors advised infertile couples to keep the fact of donor conception a secret from everyone, including the child. Led partly by the lessons of adoption, and especially with more importance today placed on knowing ones genetic markers and family medical histories, being able to make limited contact with the donor someday has become encouraged.

Have you wondered what offspring conceived from donor sperm think about as they get older?

Choice Moms was a "word of the year" contender in 2009 by New Oxford's New American dictionary. I created the term only five years ago in my "Choosing Single Motherhood" book to put the emphasis on Choice, not Single, in our motherhood journey.