• Last updated 11/7/12 by Melanie Mayo

Talking about adoption honestly supports healthy emotional development for both children and parents. Yet it is not always the easy choice. False cheer and inaccurate platitudes often feel like the less challenging way to go. (As Mitchell discovered in a light-hearted treatment of this issue on a recent Modern Family. He found it easier to tell Lily her mother was a princess--until she became obsessed with princesses!)   The road to adoption is invariably a challenging one for many adoptive parents, marked by many losses—the children they might have had, but for... read more

• Last updated 10/23/12 by Melanie Mayo

Peggy O'Mara has been inspiring natural families with her writing since 1980 when she became publisher and editor of Mothering magazine. Today her honest words continue to provide support and guidance to parents as they navigate family life. Here are some of Peggy's most loved pieces from 2012. You can read more of Peggy's recent articles on her blog.     Pregnancy & Birth   Am I Pregnant? What are the early signs of pregnancy? Thousands of women come to Mothering.com every day to ask this question. From breast changes to fatigue, Peggy O'Mara breaks... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

Assetou Diallo, with a brother, her daughter Mariam and nephew Mohammed in Kati, Mali (Photo: Peter Biro/IRC) By Peter Biro Kati, Mali— A week after Mohammed was born, he was abandoned by his parents and left in the care of an aunt who was already struggling to raise nine children. “Milk is expensive and it is very hard to feed them all,” the aunt, Assetou Diallo, said as she sat in front of her home, a one-room shack next to a busy dirt road on the outskirts of the Malian capital of Bamako. This year has been particularly... read more

• Last updated 10/22/12 by Melanie Mayo

By: Beth Berry Over the years, I have pinpointed a few behaviors that — though widely accepted and even promoted by popular culture — simply don’t serve me. Changing these behaviors is a process and one that requires both a willingness to take personal responsibility for our choices and a continuous countercultural commitment to creating our lives by a truer, though “less convenient” set of standards. However inconvenient, these subtle shifts sure have made for better living in my experience — that is, once I sorted through the... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

Last week we were at a restaurant full of kids for brunch, and our waitress pointed out that our son was the only child in the restaurant who was not staring at a smart phone or iPad.  We looked around, and sure enough she was right.  There were at least eight kids in the restaurant ranging in age from 9 months to 9 years, and they were all staring at screens.  Our son was busy ignoring our adult conversation.   He was playing with a tiny toy Meerkat, and pretending that it was peeing all over the food.   It was pretty funny, and a few minutes later we found... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

Every once in a while I hear about a mother struggling to be the perfect “attached parent” and feeling like she is failing miserably. I don’t know exactly what attachment parenting means to you, in fact, I am not sure what it means to me. But I do think that many of us feel like failures if we haven’t checked off a million things on our “perfect attached mom” list. I hear women expressing guilt over the fact that they don’t : -cloth diaper -nurse two kids -nurse past a year -co-sleep -do crafts or are feeling overwhelmed... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

I’m going to try and keep this post short and to-the-point. A handy toolkit to ease the stress of mothering, regardless of the “brand” of mothering (working, stay-at-home, by fathers, by others, you name it). This is a summary of the gems that emerged from my appearance this week with Mallika Chopra and Sarah Ripard at the California Women’s Conference. The audience loved what we shared, so I wanted to share it with you! First, why do so many of us tend towards feeling overwhelmed with the stress of mothering these days? Since humans are by nature... read more

• Last updated 10/19/12 by Melanie Mayo

By Deborah Jackson Issue 98, January/February 2000 My bed feels somewhat empty now. I lie scrunched up in one corner, like a kitten in an oversized basket, and I wonder how it came to this. My husband, Paul, is away again, working on the other side of the country, and my children are downstairs, asleep. There’s Frances, 12, sprawled easily across her loft bed (she’s going to need a bigger bed soon). Sharing her room is Alice, buried invisibly under the covers—she’s still small for her nine years. Then there’s Joseph, lying in his very own bedroom, his... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

  CC by 2.0 ricardo266 My name is Laura. I have a chronic library habit. Sure, I have other, less socially acceptable habits. We can talk about those another day. Right now I’m eager to turn other people into equally obsessed library fanatics. I’ve already been successful with my kids. The stacks of books my family brings home may be pushing up the state average. Now that my kids are older they are surprised most of their peers never bother with libraries, in person or online. And I’m surprised to see how many of my friends don’t... read more

• Last updated 10/18/12 by Melanie Mayo

Stay-at-home parents won a victory over their own financial futures late last week when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) agreed to propose a new rule requiring credit card issuers to take household, rather than just individual, income into consideration on an application for credit. The proposed rule will remedy an issue that arose last year when the Federal Reserve stipulated that credit card agencies could only consider individual income on an application. The Credit Accountability, Responsibility & Disclosure Act (CARD), which was intended... read more