Should you consider a “parenting marriage?” Or are you perhaps already in one? In this episode I welcome guests Vicki Larson and Susan Pease Gadoua back to the show. Vicki and Susan are co-authors of a very interesting book called The New “I Do:” Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. They were on the podcast WAY back on episode 12, “Are We Doing Marriage Wrong?” which remains one of our most popular yet. The New “I Do” explores the modern shape of matrimony. And while they were researching the reasons why about half of marriages don’t last, Susan and Vicki discovered that people are quietly tweaking the institution, redefining it to suit both their needs and the times. One of those is the parenting marriage. Sometimes this takes the form of people seeking each other out for the soul purpose of having a platonic co-parenting relationship and sometimes it’s about changing the job description from your mate being your lover to being just your co-parent. Whether you want a parenting marriage or not, they say, it’s important to have a dialogue about what we do and don’t expect from a marriage—“conscious coupling” as opposed to trying to fit ourselves within a one-size-fits-all definition of marriage.

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My guest on this episode is Traci Costa, the founder and CEO of Peekaboo Beans, a children’s playwear company based in Vancouver, BC. But she’s come on the show to talk about the incredibly challenging time she and her husband went through in order to become parents. Too often fertility struggles are cloaked in silence, which is unfortunate given that so many people experience them. Her story includes one heartbreaking ectopic pregnancy and round after round of IVF. If you’ve had your own difficulties conceiving, I hope you’ll leave a comment on the show notes page for this episode.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

Our society really reveres marriage. We equate being married with having yourself settled in life and in many ways with being a successful person. Yet, we don’t have that much dialogue about what it takes to keep a marriage strong. Then we’re a bit shocked when a couple in our friend group separates. As a result, we’re often talking about what goes wrong in a marriage when it’s already too late. My guest on this episode is small business, mindfulness and productivity leader Leigh Mitchell. Whether she’s advocating for families to get outside and be active together, or mentoring other entrepreneurs, Leigh is all about encouraging her community to thrive. An important aspect of that is thriving in our relationships, particularly the ones we have with our spouses. That’s why Leigh has come on the show to share her own experience with marriage counseling and how it’s helped her and her husband to weather some of life’s storms and stay happily married. 

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

My guest on today’s show is childhood sexuality expert Amy Lang, who helps parents talk to their kids about sex, love and relationships. Yes, episode 69 features a sexuality expert, something I only realized moments before recording this episode. Amy has a great website called “The Birds and Bees and Kids” and she’s here to chat with us about how to answer that age old question, “Where do babies come from?” She provides us with great language we can use to explain how babies are made as well as how to adapt these conversations for the many ways families are formed today. Amy explains that talking to our kids about sex can actually begin when they’re newborns (tune in for her very sane explanation of how) and then walks us through how to expand upon our initial sex talks with kids in age-appropriate ways as they get older. She and I also dive into what parents need to know about the changing landscape of sexuality for teens.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

For this episode I’m joined by family lawyer-turned-mediator Rosanna Breitman, who was on the show to talk about why marriages end back on episode 26, which is our most popular episode so far. I really wanted to have Rosanna back on the show to share more of her insights, this time on how people can co-parent well together after a romantic relationship ends. And in fact, we’re going to be diving even further into this topic in our very first webinar coming up on Tuesday, May 17th, 2016, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific. If you or someone you know is co-parenting, whether you’re just recently separated or even if it’s years later, please find the link to the registration for that at thenewfamily.com/coparent.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

My guest on today’s episode is Trevor MacDonald, who shares his

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My guest on the show today is psychotherapist and author Emily

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My guest on the show today is Tanel Jappinen of the blog and podcast Brand New Father—also known as T.J. He has an interesting personal story to tell of travelling around the world with his wife and baby in tow. But he’s also here to speak to us about the values of millennial dads. He and I chat about how his generation of dads is defining fatherhood in their own way, and how that compares to how their fathers raised them. We also talk about how millennial dads who wish to take parental leave or even work reasonable hours must wrestle with the expectations put on them by others who may still hold traditional ideas of men as breadwinners, not caregivers.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

My guest on today’s show has made a massive contribution to the lives of 1,000s of children. Marilyn Field is the founder of non-profit called DAREarts. It provides Canadian at-risk children and youth ages 9 through 19 with an intensive out-of-school arts immersion programs aimed building their confidence, courage and leadership through music, drama, dance, visual arts, architecture, fashion and literature.  Through her background as a teacher, Marilyn saw that the arts gave kids the tools to build life skills and to realize their potential as leaders. Today her organization has helped more than 170,000 children. She joins me to talk about what parents should know about the link between the arts and life skills, and a little bit about her life as the other mother to 1,000 of children.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!

There’s nothing quite like parenting for confronting us with our own vulnerabilities, weaknesses and patterns from the past. We love our children like crazy, yet they can try our patience like no one and nothing else. Yet there’s this pressure to act like everything is magical and wonderful. My guest on the podcast today is Casey O’Roary, a mom, educator and parenting coach who talks frankly about the fact that parenting just isn’t easy every day of the week. Casey was an elementary school teacher in the three-room school house in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. She has an MA in education and today she teaches parenting workshops and hosts her own fantastic parenting podcast, The Joyful Courage Podcast. Casey talks to us about the personal transformations that can come about as a result of our relationships with our kids and how to navigate some of the tough stuff we encounter along the way.

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This episode is brought to you by Wise Bites, makers of healthy, allergy-safe snacks that are perfect for the whole family. To get free shipping on a case, go to wise-bites.com and use promo code THENEWFAMILY at checkout!