parenting

Every day, we pose a question to the members of Gaia, Gaiam’s online community for individuals committed to creating healthy lives of meaning and purpose. Recently, we asked our community for answers to the question, “What have you learned from your mother?” In honor of Mother’s Day, here are a few of our favorite responses:

When you’re doing everything you can to eliminate chemicals in your 1-year-old’s environment, getting gifts can sometimes cause a bit of a conundrum. Take the pajamas my mother-in-law sent us this week, which were treated with fire retardants.

According to the National Association of Diaper Services, more than 18 billion single-use diapers go into the landfill each year and they can take up to 500 years to decompose. Then there’s the issue of the energy and materials that go into making the diapers and the byproducts of bleaching them. Add to that the worries about the chemicals we are exposing our babies to with many popular brands of disposable diapers, and you’ll begin to see the problem.

As if life with three young children isn’t fraught with enough danger. They could run out on a busy street when I’m rummaging in my purse for bus fare. They could laugh while chewing an organic, locally-grown grape, and choke.

Every week we highlight the best articles, blogs, news, videos and interesting Web tidbits to help you live green, be healthy, and connect with your sense of spirituality. Read our roundup for info that just helps you live better.

What Can Environmentalists Expect from Obama?

These are challenging times for parents. In our own lifespan we’ve known or been around three different types of parenting challenges.

For our grandparents, the challenges were of the most basic kind: getting enough to eat and trying to keep children alive. My grandparents lost one child at birth, at a time when nearly all births were home-births, and came close to losing my mother to the malaria that was rampant at that time in Florida.