Lately I have been hearing from women who would love for me to return to creating new podcasts. I took 2011 off from the work, but hope to return this year with new shows -- and perhaps a webinar series! I currently have 46 shows available, with more than 39,000 downloads. Here's what's available.

While I don't think Mothers have a corner on this market, this blog post from On Being points out one of the fundamental soulful ways all parents can make a mark on building our better world. And I think, slowly, we're getting there, generation by generation creating a more benevolent society.

I am happy to announce the launch of our regional e-guides -- compilations of resources and expert insight coming out of our Choice Mom Networking Events in particular cities. These e-guides will be of great help to women in those communities -- advice from local Choice Mom-friendly doctors, for example -- and some of the insights will certainly be of value to women everywhere, such as understanding what a doula might do for you.

I heard recently from a graduate student who wants to learn more about mood and social support among lesbian mothers. She's offered this information about her research study.

I know what it's like to get through security at the airport with young kids. Sometimes vacations -- wonderful as they are to celebrate with our children -- could be improved if YOU could have a day to yourself. Or at least time to read one good book in peace. Here's a solution....

Primrose Schools, a family of 200 accredited private preschools around the U.S., offered these tips for keeping your kids' minds working this summer.

Many of our children ask questions about their fathers, and right now, with Father’s Day approaching, we are all thinking and talking more about it. When we made the decision to become an SMC, this subject was, for many of us, the one which we were most concerned about, and rightly so. Deciding to raise a child without a father has a real impact on our children and on us.

This Mother's Day weekend I'm contemplating the good, the bad, and the ugly of Choice Motherhood.

One of the women helping me pull together the Boston Choice Mom Networking Event on June 26 is Holly. On this Mother's Day weekend, she came clean about the single parent lifestyle. We're looking for YOUR insight.

Jo-Anne Cutler is a Family Communication Specialist and Awareness coach, who helps people who are "stuck" make the shifts they need to experience more peace, fun and happiness in their lives. That extends to helping parents build the best stress-free environment to enable their kids to thrive.

How do we celebrate Father's Day?

A San Francisco Choice Mom wrote to me recently, asking how to address the half-sibling topic with her son. She's been in contact with two lesbian couples on the East Coast who have sons from the same donor.

This has come up so frequently lately that I want to focus our attention again on responses to these topics: What do we tell our children, and others, about how they were conceived? About why they don't have a dad?

Choice Mom Stacey MacGlashan (author of "Just You and Me, Kid") is working with Choice Moms LLC on a 24-page storybook for kids. It is a lovely story about a girl who gets asked by another child, "why don't you have a dad?" And it needs illustrators.

Several years ago there was some measure of relief among Choice Moms -- and consternation among some others -- when author Peggy Drexler published Raising Boys Without Men that revealed that boys in homes headed by single mothers by choice and lesbian couples were doing quite well. Now she's published a book about the impact fathers have on daughters.

Here it is...the end of the month when we focused on Conscious Conversations, and it took me weeks to get to THIS conversation with you. Isn't that the trickiness of our lives? How to make time for what matters, when the minutia of everyday gets in our way.

From new Choice Mom-friendly estate planner Chris Tymchuck, of Unique Family Law: When we saw a man on the side of the road asking for money, my 3-year-old daughter asked, "what is he doing with that sign?" I braced myself for a difficult conversation.

A friend called out of the blue to ask to catch up after months of absence. We talked about how hard it is for him to find interesting women to talk to about non-superficial things, and how he wondered if he’d ever find a partner.

As we were driving through yet another snowstorm in Minneapolis the other day, so I could get my 11-year-old daughter to a birthday party, she suggested I get a husband.

I'm very happy to report that 30 Welcome Kits went out to new Choice Moms last week. This is a special new perk to the Choice Mom community, which includes...

Nick Jr. has been in touch with Choice Moms about developing a relationship with its Nick Jr. Boost online educational games for preschoolers. To start things off...

A newborn mom thinking ahead to her return to the work world worried about how to help her daughter transition into naps that don't involve breastfeeding her to sleep.

Kim, 45, launched an interesting question on one of the Choice Mom discussion boards last week. She was curious what women thought about whether there was an age when it was "too old" to be a parent. Not in terms of conceiving, but just general parenting.

This list was offered by Carrie Crompton at Cultural Care Au Pair, who is offering a great $500 discount to the Choice Mom community.

Here it is! For a limited time, the special new baby for our Choice Mom community. Our Choice of ChoiceMoms.org tips from 2010, featuring everything from Organization to Building a Support Network, Q&A to Commentary.

Before you know it, we realize our children are old enough to sometimes be home alone. For single parents, this can be a blessing -- not relying on babysitters every time we have to go to a neighborhood dinner party -- but the question is asked, how old should our children be before we entrust them?

It is always surprising to me how often I seem to be in a state of revising my plans. I meant to grow up, meet my prince, get married and have kids. I really did. It just didn't work out that way.

At Thanksgiving time, it's easy to remind ourselves and our kids to be thankful and appreciative. But what about all the other days of the year? I recently read several good tips from one book that might help.

I spent part of the morning worrying about my bathmat. Actually my lack of a bathmat. I’d spilled something on it some weeks ago and couldn’t get it clean so I’d thrown it away. I’d been using a towel as a mat ever since. What would the social worker doing my home study think of that?

As a single working mom, I find myself falling into a bad habit of trying to cram as much 'fun' into the weekend days as humanely possible, which can end up creating more stress rather than relieving it. There are a few things I've done recently to try to combat this.

There are 20 major markets where Choice Moms live. There are Choice Moms everywhere, of course, but I'm focusing on 20 communities where this website gets the most traffic from single women. I'm building resource guides for the cities listed below, with your help.

I've had two experiences recently where I've definitely felt the difficulties of being a single mom.

When Sandy Chalkoun's son was 11 months old, her husband decided to leave the marriage. Since then, this Montreal-based lawyer has written a book about how to be a happy single parent. There are useful insights for Choice Moms.

Some time ago on the old Choice Moms blog format, Denise offered these fun and wise thoughts on what she'd learned after 10 months of Choice Motherhood. They were too priceless to disappear, so I've resurrected them here. We invite you to add your own.

A new Choice Mom admitted her exhaustion with the first months of motherhood. Women in the community chimed in with support. Here are two of the responses.

The first few weeks (and months, and maybe years?) of motherhood are a beautiful and emotional time. You bond with Baby, and learn about each other, and stare dreamily into each others' eyes. You are also wracked with hormones, and lack of sleep, and an almost overpowering, choking terror.

For too long I've ignored the needs of our moms with growing kids. As you'll notice, this website is robust with articles about the emotional and fertility needs of our community, but less for the woman who is doing the job of single parenting her much-beloved child(ren). No more. Much more content is coming for the Waiting, Becoming and Being sections, thanks to new partners.

A woman who is preparing to write about the Choice Motherhood lifestyle in a community that doesn't think single parenting is such a good thing asked me to offer some resources. I realized that many of you might benefit from some of it, in your own conversations with others.

ONLY TEN COPIES LEFT IN PRINT! Years ago I collaborated with Wendy and Ryan Kramer, the mother-and-son co-founders of Donor Sibling Registry, on some new tools for families created by donor conception. This was one of them.

In National Adoption Month I want to share some of the stories of single women who have become mothers because of adoption.

After I became a mother to Sophia back in 1999, I ended up unexpectedly creating a less stressful and healthier lifestyle. Partly this was because I didn't have time to work 60-hour work weeks -- and didn't want to. But also because I wanted to instill better habits in my child so she would eventually live a healthy lifestyle.

The topic of using estate plan templates -- kits with fill-in-the-blank options about guardianship and will issues -- came up among a group of single mothers by choice recently. A Choice Mom and attorney in the group offered her insight.

Adoptive Families continues to be one of the best sources available for women on the adoption path. Here are some great articles they've just announced about helping to educate your child's classmates and teachers about adoption.

On this 9/11 day, I wanted to reflect on the impact that day had on me as a Choice Mom. My daughter and I were living in New York City, about 20 blocks away from the World Trade Center, and until then I had no intention of leaving the city that had been my home for 18 years.

I've become acquainted with the very interesting work and brain of Harvard professor Steven Pinker, and have been reading his 2002 book "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature." So it was with pleasure that I read (pages 398-399) some of his thoughts on the nature vs. nurture debate as it relates to how we raise our children.

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.

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.

One of the things I loved about the new Choice Mom memoir by Stacey MacGlashan, "Just you and me, kid," was the insight she offered to other Choice Moms about the reality of the newborn days. Her kind reminder to women like us that attempting to be superwoman is just plain dumb. And her warning to pre-moms that you need a certain kind of stamina -- that most of us do have -- in order to succeed.

Although I've written about all the ways other people and experiences can fill in gaps in a child's life, our role of parent can -- and should -- be the strongest influence on our children's lives, if done well. To that end, I'm launching a new area of ChoiceMoms.org that helps us become the best parents we can be.

I am happy to announce that Choice Moms® is launching a growing library of regional resource guides for the Choice Mom community. The first guide is now available, with its ongoing collection of insights and tips offered by experts and single women specifically from the New York City area.

A few years ago a producer for noted conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly called to test me for a potential debate with his boss about why Choice Moms dislike men. Maybe it's because I was pretty easy-going in my responses, but I was never booked for the show. In his recent remarks about Choice Motherhood, however, I see he still has a bug up his

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.

If you're thinking of adopting transracially, or are heading a transracial family, listen here for insight. The experts we assembled at a recent Choice Moms event included two Choice Moms who were raised in transracial families, a woman who parented a young woman from a refugee camp, a representative from Children's Home Society, and several Choice Moms who are raising a transracial family.

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.

I returned from a great primitive island camping trip with another Choice Mom, two dads, and the seven kids we have who have known each other for years. And one of the 30 emails waiting for me from the long weekend was the link to a blog from Kat Wilder, who is trying to understand who Choice Moms are, and why we do what we do.

We usually include an estate planner at Choice Mom networking events, to make sure women understand everything they need to about protecting their child both BEFORE and after motherhood. Here's a tip that Julie, 28 weeks pregnant, learned from attorney Chuck Roulet at the Minneapolis event.

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.

At the Austin Choice Moms event we started to talk about ways to simplify, and add flexibility to our work life, so that we can enjoy more time with our kids. How do we do it?

Do you feel rushed? Exhausted? Like you don't have enough time with your kids? Take five minutes out of your schedule to read and contemplate this. Then share an idea of how to pause in your own life every day.

A childcare provider who is on the Choice Mom journey offers these tips in finding the right caregiver:

A Choice Mom made a list of the pros and cons of nanny vs. childcare center, as she prepared to go back to work. Here is her list, and the comments elicited from other Choice Moms:

I was asked by American Fertility Association to write an op-ed about my reaction to the stories, issues and disapproval I've heard about a single parent's ability to be the best they can be for their child.

One woman on the Choice Mom discussion board noticed a pattern -- that others have agreed with -- about who tends to disapprove of the Choice Mom path, and who does not: