Part six in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Welcome to the sixth and final installment of Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, a series full of helpful suggestions aimed at showing professional women how they can balance career and motherhood. How they can “have it all.” In article four, Working Moms Can’t Do It Alone: Teamwork Is Everything, I talked about how to build a team before you even get pregnant. In article five, The Power of Two — A Working Mom’s Partner, I discussed having a supportive partner. Now let’s…

Part five in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Tonight, my husband came home exhausted and dragging from a hard day at work. He dropped off his briefcase — which in his case is a backpack — and went straight into the kitchen. He cleaned, he organized, he did the dishes, and then started on the laundry.

I was so frustrated I almost cried.

He was trying to help, of course, as he always does — and I love him for it. The night before I had fallen down the stairs over…

Part four in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Teamwork. That’s the key to being a working mom. Most of the world still depends on an extended family to raise children; in fact, some areas still turn out in droves to raise a barn. Without communities, world history would look a lot different. Now, bring that concept into your own home; to balance working life and motherhood, you need your own community, your own team. No one — absolutely no one — does this alone.

When I left — or actually fled…

Part three in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Flashback: 1987, the film Baby Boom, starring Diane Keaton. A Manhattanite advertising executive nicknamed the “Tiger Lady” inherits a baby, is pushed out of her job, buys a farm in Vermont, and founds a wildly successful baby food company that her former company tries to acquire. As she prepares a triumphal return to her old life, she has an epiphany. “I’m not the Tiger Lady anymore,” she tells the stunned boardroom. “I have a crib in my office and a mobile over my…

Part two in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Pick the right job? Sounds silly, right? After all, your career is your career. But it’s no secret that some jobs are more family friendly. You may continue your upward trajectory in the corporate world and leave the primary caregiving to your partner. You may find an equally fulfilling, more flexible profession. You may stay where you are but demand some consideration. There are no wrong answers. It’s never easy, but with the right tools, you can make it work. …

Part one in a six-part series, Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, from Reinventing the Working Mom®

Having it all. It’s become a catchall, a cliché. It’s a criticism (“She left the meeting early; I guess that’s what they mean by ‘having it all.’”) It’s well-meaning, if patronizing advice. (“Just don’t try to have it all.”) And it’s the dream of countless women. (“Could I really have it all?”)

The answer is, of course you can.

Welcome to Creative Parenting for the Working Mom, a six-part series that will help you navigate the often thorny landscape that is balancing career…

Dear Matthew,

You were the child I was so determined to have that at forty I became a single mother by choice. For the past nine years, you have shown me every day how smart that decision was. You’ve gone from having me all to yourself to being a wonderful son to your new father, and an incredible brother to your little sister. You’ve absorbed the traits and talents you got from me and made them better, and you’ve found new ones I’ll never have.

You’ve heard me tell you I love you. You’ve heard me say I am proud…

Money. We all need it. We never seem to have enough. And most of us wish we had started saving earlier. But money is nothing more than a tool that can work for or against you, lifting you to great heights or miring you in misery. Think of it as a magic lamp — wonderfully powerful, but in the wrong hands…

My own financial journey was a twisting, winding road. As a child in China, I knew my father worked in America, a magical land with mountains of money and golden roads. He worked double shifts as a busboy to…