Go read—Cora talks about growing up with a working mom, being a working mom, making her way in a male-dominated field, meeting Julia Child, coming out, and creating her family through shared egg donation and IVF with Jennifer (similar to what Helen and I did, though we stopped after one child).

Kudos to Working Mother for a great profile of a lesbian mom. Not every mainstream publication can do it in such an informative and balanced way, neither shying away from her orientation nor making it seem like the primary focus of her life.

If you have school-age kids, what is your family doing to prepare for the start of the school year? We’re trying to get out to some fun local sites before our son starts kindergarten. Other than making sure he has clean socks for the first day, I think that’s about all we have to do at this grade.

If there’s one thing almost all parents will agree on, it’s that parenting takes time. No matter how well-behaved our children, and how accommodating our partners, there is hardly a mom or dad around who would say she or he has more time now than before becoming a parent. One of the effects of this, for the LGBT community, is that those who have one of the strongest reasons to fight for LGBT rights have the least time to do so.

Becoming a parent doesn’t have to mean abandoning activism, though. With a little creativity and a dash of technology, we can find many quick ways to continue our contributions to the cause. Here are some ideas.

E-mail your politicians. Technology makes it easy to be a vocal constituent. Enter your elected officials’ names into your favorite search engine to find their Web sites and e-mail addresses. If you don’t know their names, use the non-partisan Congress.org to look them up by zip code. You can also sign up with the major national and state LGBT advocacy organizations to receive action alerts by e-mail. These often have links so you can click through to pre-written messages and send them off without needing to compose your own. If you prefer to write your own, of course, you can simply use the alerts as reminders to do so. The Family Pride Coalition’s Speaker’s Toolkit offers many useful tips for composing effective messages to politicians (as well as to newspapers and other media). I urge you to download and read it if you will be writing your own e-mails rather than using the pre-made ones.

Comment on parenting blogs and forums. Many of us already read LGBT parenting blogs or online forums. Go a step further, however, and comment on general parenting blogs, such as Babble and ParentDish. Offer an LGBT perspective on posts that might not be explicitly about LGBT issues, but which you feel have an LGBT angle, e.g., ones about adoption or financial planning. Be active on comment threads about general parenting topics (diapers, time management, etc.) to show the commonalities of all parents. Simply include examples using “my partner and I,” with the appropriate pronouns, to ensure LGBT visibility. Finally, if other readers leave negative comments about LGBT families, make sure their remarks are never without positive ones for balance.

Participate in parenting social networks. Social networks are online communities where you can create a personal profile, keep your own blog or journal, upload photos, find other people with similar experiences, and share stories and ideas. Popular parenting networks include AtHomeDad.org, Café Mom, Dad Daily, Maya’s Mom (for moms and dads), Minti, Mothers Click, Mommy Buzz, and Parents Connect. Several also have active LGBT-specific forums within them. Don’t forget the value, though, in stepping out of the LGBT space and being visible in other areas.

Some social networks have very specific aims. Parentography, for example, focuses on places for family travel. Users recommend and review destinations they’ve visited. Again, writing “When my partner and I took our kids to …” helps LGBT visibility, even if there’s otherwise nothing LGBT-specific about the review. You can also mention when venues have been particularly friendly (or not) to LGBT families. Another network, Care Square, connects parents and caregivers such as sitters and nannies. You have an opportunity here to post recommendations for LGBT-friendly caregivers, letting people know this is something to value.

Write reviews of LGBT-positive children’s books. The major online booksellers let users rate and write reviews of books they’ve read. Many LGBT-inclusive children’s books have negative reviews by people who don’t think kids should learn about LGBT families. Write reviews saying that you believe otherwise. Of course, if the book is badly written, say that too, but be clear your criticism is about its literary merit and not its choice of subject matter. You can even make this an ongoing project, and write one review per week or per month until you’ve gone through your bookshelf.

It is wise to keep a few things in mind when writing for the Web: Be brief. No one wants to read through a feature-length essay when they expect a short forum comment. Stay on topic. Don’t go on about LGBT marriage rights when responding to a blog post about brands of diapers. Be courteous. Take the high road if discussion gets nasty. If you resort to name calling, you still won’t convince the ultra-conservatives, and you might lose respect among those whose minds you could change.

In this vein, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to spend a lot of time responding to far-right blogs and forums. Debate there often descends into name-calling, or at best, deadlock. Our personal efforts are better directed at swaying the minds of the undecided, unaware, or willing to listen (though we should also support the organizations fighting the far-right in legislatures and courts).

Despite the many things we can do online, however, the most important action we can take to contribute to the cause of LGBT rights, even on parent time, is simply to be visible in our local communities. A conversation at the playground or soccer practice, or a thoughtful comment at a PTA meeting can go a long way to building bridges.

I’ve found one trick that can save a few minutes, though. If I simply hang the jacket hood on his head, it’s in the right position for him to get his arms in, and I don’t have to stand there holding it. He still feels like he’s doing it himself. I can put my own jacket on and be done just in time to zip him up.

Simple, but hey, it’s sometimes the simple things that get us through. Any other time-saving, child-dressing tricks you’ve found?

Co-founder and CEO Ariel Kleckner Ford was kind enough to answer some questions for Mombian readers about her growing business. She’s a straight ally and mom who has taken active steps to ensure LGBT parents feel welcome in CareSquare’s online community.

What are the advantages of CareSquare over finding caregivers offline or through an existing online service like Craigslist?

CareSquare.com exists to automate the process parents are already going through offline when looking for babysitters and nannies. The problem with the offline process as it stands today is that it just takes too long – all the back-and-forth with phone calls, waiting for responses, checking on references, checking on availability is just a very arduous process, but one that we currently deal with all the time when using our community as a resource for new caregivers. CareSquare wants to streamline this process as much as possible for families.

A service like Craigslist is great, but it is just not that robust – it is simply not focused on the specific needs of families and caregivers when trying to connect and book services.

What gave you the idea to start CareSquare?

CareSquare was borne wholly of need. I started it with a close friend from my high school days. We are both parents of young kids, and are both geeks :-). About a year and a half ago, we were trying to make weekend plans and were struggling with finding a babysitter. We started brainstorming on what we WISH we had online to help us. And CareSquare was born…

Security and privacy are obviously key concerns. How can parents and caregivers be sure that they are viewing trustworthy information about the others on CareSquare? What steps have you taken to ensure personal information is kept secure?

This is always the first question that comes to mind when we talk about CareSquare, and one we take very seriously. While CareSquare does not assume responsibility for the performance of each and every caregiver on the site, we do everything we can to inform and empower parents to ensure ultimate safety. We offer connection to Trustline – a California state agency that performs comprehensive background checks for free. But the most powerful mechanism CareSquare offers to ensure security is the referrals from other community members. We do everything we can to encourage babysitters to get references and recommendations from families they have worked for before, and make it very easy for parents to contact one another privately to check on references. Additionally, we highly encourage parents to perform background checks on their own. We can never be too careful with our kids.

As far as information being displayed on the site, both parents and caregivers are in full control of who gets to see what. We think this allows for the maximum amount of security, and allows our users to feel comfortable sharing private information.

It seems that the usefulness of your site will grow as more caregivers use it to offer their services within a given geographic area, and as more parents rate these caregivers. Are you focusing on specific regions as you roll out? If so, where?

We have initially rolled out in the SF Bay area because that is where we live and we feel we understand the market well here. We are testing different marketing strategies now, and once we understand what works, we can begin to roll out in other urban areas. That being said, people across the country are starting to hear about CareSquare and are starting to use it, especially in Texas, Florida and Los Angeles. We encourage them to do so – we just haven’t focused our marketing efforts yet in those areas.

It’s clear you’re LGBT-friendly when your application form says “First Parent” and “Second Parent” instead of “Mom” and “Dad.” What can CareSquare members do to indicate they’re looking for (or are) an LGBT-friendly caregiver? How else can CareSquare benefit families with special requests or needs?

As a mom living in the heart of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco, I am close with a number of LGBT parents and spoke to them extensively when we were designing this site. I hope our design and service reflects these efforts. Later this spring we will be launching the CareSquare service on a broader social networking platform, allowing LGBT parents to form their own groups and message with one another privately. Meanwhile, LGBT parents can post their specific needs on their profile page. We are wide open to suggestions from Mombian users on how to even better service their needs. [Leave suggestions here. -Ed.]

CareSquare is still in beta testing, and currently free. How do you intend to make money going forward? Will there be a fee for the service? Advertising?

We plan to make money from a blend of (tasteful) advertising, premium services and partnerships with companies offering products of interest to our users.

Can you let us know of any additional features you’ll be offering?

We are really excited about the launch of a lot more social networking features later this spring – things like job posting boards, message boards, tags, private blogs, recommendations on other household services and enhanced abilities for communication between families and caregivers. We are currently drawing up the specs for this release now and are WIDE open to recommendations.

Your bio says you’re expecting a second child this spring. How do you manage to be CEO of a startup, pregnant, and the mom of a two-year-old son?

First and foremost, wiith the love and support of a fantastic life partner. I do need to draw boundaries for myself and be very clear about which hours and days of the week are devoted to work, and which are devoted to family. It’s hard to turn those things on and off sometimes, but it is necessary for the balance and health of our family.

Being pregnant has really fueled my drive to make CareSquare an even greater success – I feel like I am in this incredibly fertile period of my life right now and am channelling as much productive energy as possible into the business. Keeping my mind on growing the business has kept me from counting the minutes left until I am not pregnant anymore, as this last trimester in particular has been pretty uncomfortable and time feels like it is protracted. I’m sure things will slow down for a little while after the newborn is here, but am excited to witness the ongoing growth of the amazing community already being fostered on the site.

Electronic calendars and PDAs are all well and good, and I’m entirely reliant on Google Calendar myself. Still, it’s often useful to have a calendar hanging in the kitchen, and a wall calendar is a great learning tool for teaching kids about time and dates. I’m not giving up on paper quite yet.

• For hard-to-find items that local stores may not carry. Amazon has a good selection of natural and organic products, for example, as well as items like vegan and gluten-free foods. (My personal hard-to-find items are Huggies Overnites Diapers. I buy the regular ones at a local warehouse store, but have the darndest time finding the Overnites anywhere.)
• To make trips to the store faster when children are in tow, or you’re rushing to pick them up.
• Because if you’re like me, you’re ordering books from Amazon anyway, and groceries can help you qualify for free “super-saver” shipping. Who could resist the temptation to order a box of chocolate-chip cookies with the new novel?

Random trivia: The top-selling items in Amazon’s Grocery category right now are Raw Revolution Organic Live Food Bars. “Coconut and Chocolate” heads the list at number one, and three other flavors make the top ten.

This is a brand-spankin’ new service, so I haven’t yet done any price comparisons with my local stores. I suspect there will be times when convenience trumps all, regardless.

Matt, who is not a parent, writes:

I can imagine that many LGBT families don’t have the time that I might have or other activists might have in order to play the political game and do all that activist-type things. I can imagine, from my experience of seeing my mom, that many LGBT parents are too busy taking care of their kids – feeding them, clothing them, taking them to and from school, extra-curriculars and sports – in order to take time off to go to dinners of LGBT advocacy groups or go to lobby days or go pimping out a petition to their local or state governments. I can imagine that thoughts and notions of equality and justice are secondary in the minds of many LGBT parents and that their partners and children are always first. . . .

The only thing I worry about, especially since I am now heading up a (small, but growing) advocacy group, is if these activists and groups are missing a very important and vital part of the LGBT and allied community? Are we hearing the voices of LGBT families and parents, or are we too busy with our jobs and families too busy with their family life to even cross paths?

It’s a good question. I’ll answer for myself, but urge you to leave comments here or on Matt’s blog with your own thoughts.

My own activism has indeed shifted since I became a parent. Now that I am staying home with my son, I no longer lead an LGBT network of over 200 corporate employees. I attend fundraising dinners less often. My partner and I have continued to contribute money to several groups, although the amount has shrunk now that we’re on a single income and funding a college-savings account. I still e-mail my elected officials, but am even more grateful for the online forms that make this quick and easy.

I’ve also added some activism since becoming a mom. I maintain this blog, and sometimes pester my readers about writing to their elected officials. I also go to local, non-LGBT children’s activities with my son. Those who meet him are charmed (parental bias, I know), and once they find out I’m a lesbian, they’re stuck with the image of a happy, cared-for child in a lesbian home. It’s a kind of quiet activism to gain the support of the unbiased but unknowing, as I’ve written before. Sacha at Babycakes said much the same thing in her Blogging for LGBT Families Day entry:

We will continue to challenge a society that has become complacent and accepting of only one version of family as the norm. We will do this by being out and proud, by being mom and mom, by being on boards and going to PTA meetings. This is quiet activism, and quiet activism works.

I would modify Matt’s speculation that “thoughts and notions of equality and justice are secondary in the minds of many LGBT parents and that their partners and children are always first.” I would say that the daily safety, care, and feeding of my family comes first as a matter of practicality, but that equality and justice have become even more important now that they also affect the well-being of my son. My activism has changed, yes. I may not go to the Pride Parade if it’s during naptime. But ceasing to help build the world I want my son to live in means failing as a parent.

Matt asks a good question, though, when he asks whether LGBT advocacy groups are missing out on parents’ voices. Is there a gap here? If so, do we need to fill it, or should parents do what they can from home (donations, e-mails) and let those with more time do the phone banks and door knocking? Are there things we can do to bring the groups together, like having more childcare volunteers at the LGBT community center during voter-mobilization night? Or are parents really still involved? Your thoughts?