Recently, an old friend of mine sent me a heart-wrenching email. She said that she and her husband of 12 years were separating. He’s not happy, they’ve grown apart, and so on. Now my friend is launching life as a single mom of two young children, both under the age of 5.

Incidentally, my friend is [...]

Last night on the news, I heard a brief report about kids in day care—something that’s important to many working moms. The report said that kids in day care tend to adjust to school well and have better vocabulary skills than kids who haven’t been in day care. The flip side is that kids in [...]

One of the great things about being a journalist is that interesting things tend to hit your desk without you ever having to look for them. Case in point: Mom Corps. Recently, I got an email from the executive assistant at the Atlanta-based company telling me about an “Own Your Life” conference that’s going to [...]

The more I read about and talk with working moms, the more I’m convinced that the key to making the working mom thing work is having a flexible schedule. I know moms who come in early, so they can be home to meet the school bus. Others, like myself, work from home one day a [...]

MSNBC recently conducted a survey to find out how child-rearing affected the ability of women bosses to do their jobs. (Check it out at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17381270/from/ET.) Of 60,000 people surveyed, 15 percent thought that child-care responsibilities interfered with the ability of women bosses to do their jobs. Only about 7 percent thought that child-care responsibilities interfered [...]

Sorry, it has been so long since I’ve written. I certainly didn’t plan for this to happen. I planned to blog. In fact, I can tell you I planned to sit down at 4 pm two Thursdays ago to blog, but at 3:30 that day Owen’s daycare called to say he had a fever of [...]

It occurs to me recently that while having two working parents gives most families the benefit of an extra income, it also conjures up a lot of additional expenses. In my house, for example, we get dinner-to-go every weekday night. (Then we’re lucky if Owen actually lets us eat it.) We’ve hired cleaning people to [...]

Obviously, women work for practical reasons. Given the prices of real estate (and everything else) around here, a two-person income seems like more of a necessity than a luxury. But then there are those women who don’t have to work, but do. Maybe their careers bring them a sense of satisfaction they can’t live without—or [...]

When I returned from maternity leave, my colleague and co-blogger, Jeanne Muchnick, gave me a mug with these words on it: Beware of the Sleep-Deprived Mom. I laughed when she gave it to me, thinking it was such a Jeanne gift. Today, however, Jeanne would be the one laughing as “sleep deprived” is light years [...]

Last night I got my haircut. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not. These days in order for me to get a haircut—or go to the dentist or do anything else that I can’t delegate—I have to arrange for someone to cover me at work and cover me at home. Ordinarily I plan haircuts on [...]