These new feats of personhood leave me proudly heart-swollen, of course (and also painfully chest-swollen), but they also make me go slackjawed with terror because, woah nelly, if he can understand “book” and “milk” and “shoe,” what other colorful four-letter words does he hear fly out of my mouth? My better half solidifies his better-halfness every time he catches me talking blue around our baby–”rats,” “phooey,” and “dagnabbit” will celebrate a revival in our house if he has anything to say about it–and although I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it this new church-lady language, I am trying (sometimes).

When I was growing up, my parents never swore much around me, and I certainly never swore around them. I once slipped and said “Taco Hell” instead of “Taco Bell” and thought I was going to melt a hole through the back seat of the car, so firey was my flush of embarrassment. What I didn’t hear at home, though, I heard elsewhere–in movies, at school, and around the ‘hood, aka the squeaky-clean suburbs of Salt Lake City–and if swear words weren’t always a part of my daily verbiage, they were at least part of my known lexicon, ever at the ready if I needed one in a pinch (and I occasionally did).

Yet, even though I knew all the swear words and how to use them and when and why, I think it was healthy to grow up knowing they were taboo, something for adults but not kids, something to be whispered under one’s breath and with the dark thrill of rule-breaking. As a child, I never used a swear word without feeling a little bit bad about it, and I think that was a good balance for me. I was too Pollyanna about too many other things; expletives were all I had.

As an adult, I’ve heard the argument that swear words indicate a weak vocabulary and feeble mind, but to those people I say…phooey. I never underestimate the power of a well-placed f-bomb, and I don’t think being a mother will ever change that, no matter how trashy and juvenile that makes me.

How about you? Do you swear around your kids? If you do, did you teach them that swearing is for adults only, or are they allowed to swear as well? Do you have rules about what particular words can be used, and when and where? (I knew kids whose parents let them swear only at home and only to express frustration, not to insult others.) Or did you give up swearing when you had kids, avoiding the habit entirely as a way of teaching your children that foul language is not acceptable in any context? (And for kicks, does anyone have any funny stories about swearing toddlers? My brother called my grandma “scumbag” when he was two years old, and we’re still laughing about it twenty-six years later (although not in front of Grandma!).)

Anecdotal wisdom tells us that women (and mothers specifically) are better and more creative multitaskers than men, and there’s no doubt that many of the skills we hone as parents (time management, conflict resolution, cramming down a sandwich while on a conference call and de-spamming our inbox and dusting the bookshelf) make us better employees. What I’d never stopped to consider, though, was how it works the other way around. What are the things we learn in school and/or on the job that directly translate into our becoming better mothers? (Did your time at the pastry academy prepare you for kindergarten bake sales, and do you deliver?)

Obviously, getting an education for education’s sake is a worthy enough goal in and of itself, so I’m in no way implying that women who want to be full-time SAHMs don’t need or deserve an education and practical job skills. Education is important for everyone, regardless of whether they plan to “use” it in the traditional sense, and having a learned background in just about anything can only benefit our kids, as it gives us a place to start from–whether that’s car mechanics or ancient Greek mythology or cell biology–as we teach them about life.

What I’m interested in here is not how general book-learnin’ knowledge has shaped your life as a parent but whether the subject-specific skills you earned in school or the workforce have had a practical application in your role as a mother. Nurses, teachers, cooks, chauffeurs…that’s easy; I get that. But as an editor, I can only hope that one day my talent for punctuation usage will come in just as handy in raising my son.

What career skills have helped you become a better mother? Did you choose your career with a mind to how it would fold into your role as a mother? If not, do you wish you had? Do you think women trained in certain disciplines make better mothers?

In thinking about why working is so important to me–it’s so much more than a necessity; it’s practically a virtue–I wonder how much I was influenced by my own mother, who went back to work part-time when I was two months old and who is still today working the nightshift as a hospital supervisor. Although most of the mothers in our suburban neighborhood stayed at home while their husbands worked, I’ve never felt like my mother’s career was unusual, or was intended as a feminist social statement, or was even an example of what I should strive for in my own life. She worked because she had to and/or she wanted to, and although I don’t think she was consciously showing me by example that it should be done, she was at least showing me (and other women) that it could be done. Whether I consider that pressure or inspiration is a matter of perspective.

This fascinating article by the Pew Research Center on varied aspects of working mother demographics over the years includes a graph showing the growth of women in the labor force since the 1950s, when my own mother was born to my grandmother, a working mom herself in an era when it was even less common.

When I think about how hard it is to be a working mother in 2009, when, according to the Pew Center’s findings, not only are more mothers working but more people support their right to do so, I can’t help but find inspiration in the strength my mother and grandmother showed as working moms when society’s attitude was much less positive. (In 1987, 30 percent of Americans believed women should return to their “traditional roles,” i.e., as stay-at-home mothers and homemakers, compared to only 19 percent in 2009.)    

I still wouldn’t say my status as a working mom is a direct result of having been raised by a working mom, but it definitely helps me get through the rough days to have that precedent, to know that my mother survived and thrived as a career woman, as did her mother before her, and that if I want it bad enough I can make that my reality too.  

Did having a mother who worked (either inside or outside the home) influence your decision to work after having kids? Did having a mother who didn’t work make you want to? Is your spouse’s attitude toward working mothers influenced by whether his mother worked or not? Do you think that by working yourself you’re sending your children a positive message about working moms?

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I feel so scattered and thinly spread these days, but I suspect it might have to do with thinking I could maintain my full-time workload and full-time office persona on a less-than-part-time schedule. Last week I missed a deadline for a coworker because I lost her email in the shuffle of trying to do too many things–both business and personal–during one too-short naptime on a non-work day, and as I was apologizing profusely to my coworker (while banging my head on the keyboard because how could I be so careless?) I couldn’t help but think that (a) she was rolling her eyes because isn’t that just like a part-time “mom-ployee” (blech) to lose an email? and (b) this never would have happened if I still worked full-time.

Part of the problem is that when I go to work, I don’t always feel like I’m fully there. Because I’m only in the office one day a week, it seems like I spend my first hour on the clock getting my bearings as if I’d been on another planet for the previous week, which, in some ways, I have. Staying at home with a pre-toddler means adapting to strange customs, following bizarre routines, and speaking a foreign language–all of it worlds away from the comfortable, “native” existence that used to be my full-time job, which now, in comparison, is sometimes like being on the moon.

And then when I’m at home, I can never quite relax and be in the moment as a part-time mother because I’ve always got work hovering over me like a cartoon stormcloud. Gone is the old 9-5, and in its place is the 24/7; I work when I can, even if that’s bleary-eyed in the middle of the night or at noon with a wriggling kid on my knee. It never ends, not the parenting stuff or the career stuff, and it just now hit me that I’ve not been a part-time mom and a part-time employee all this time, but a full-time everything, to everyone, without even realizing it. No wonder I’m exhausted.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about sharing stories with other parents, it’s that the giving and receiving of advice, no matter how un-advicey you spin it, is fraught with danger. No one wants to be told what to do (and how to do it and when to do it) or, worse, that they’re Doing It Wrong, and that’s why I’ve taken to sharing tips instead. You can’t argue with a tip. A tip is just a tip. Here are some of my favorites:

• A handful of ice cube chunks (smallish ones) on a highchair tray will give you enough time to empty the dishwasher, slam down a quick bite, or check your email.

• Baby waking up waaaaaay before you’re ready? Put him in his exersaucer next to the bed and he’ll never notice your eyes are half-closed.

And the most genius idea…er, happy accident, of my parenting career:

• The Baby Be Quiet music mix. Several months ago, after my 60GB iPod died, I was gifted a wee iPod Shuffle and only had time to put about a dozen songs on it before I got distracted by something shiny. The songs I’d grabbed were from a playlist I’d made for my son called “Dance Baby”—a selection of tunes that were upbeat and kid-friendly without being “music for kids”—and for weeks on end that’s all we’d listen to when we were at home. Flash forward to Labor Day Weekend, about seven hours into our eleven-hour roadtrip, and guess what works like a charm to calm a cranky baby? Since then, whenever he starts fish-flopping into inconsolability, all it takes is the first few seconds of any of his “Dance Baby” songs and it’s all smiles from there on out. (Just make sure you choose songs you really really love, because for all I know they might be on infinite repeat until the kid graduates high school and he’s listening to music with his Apple iBrain.)

Hu-what?

I’m not even going to touch the ways in which that decision not only discourages working women from breastfeeding at all but also opens the door to revoking what protections pregnant employees already have under the law. (If breastfeeding is a choice, and a company can apparently fire a women for her decision to breastfeed, how long until someone argues that getting pregnant is, generally speaking, a choice as well, and therefore companies should have the legal right to fire an employee for her decision to get pregnant? My hackles are sky-high.)

I understand why the decision in Allen v. totes/Isotoner Corp. went the way it did—the defending lawyers made the case about Allen’s unscheduled breaks, not about what she was doing on those breaks, i.e., pumping milk for her infant—but even though her termination may have been justified or legal doesn’t mean it was right. The Salon.com article linked above explains why the firing was unquestionably gender discrimination and why, moreso, the woman should have been protected under the state’s pregnancy-related anti-discrimination laws. Other articles on the case speculate that the decision may eventually be overturned.

When I started this article, I planned to end with the question “Would you ever boycott a company based on their treatment of working mothers?” but now that I’m here at the end I’m more interested to just hear what other working mothers think of this case. Where do you stand on this case and/or the larger issue(s), and what implications do you think this has for the future?

Yes, it sounded like a great solution, so then why was I composing a mental list of all the reasons it was a bad idea for us (the baby would get sick; how could I trust these other mothers I didn’t know?; my schedule changes too much and I wouldn’t want to flake out on anyone; what if my son went missing in someone’s house now that he’s mobile and fast enough to get down the hall and stuck under a table, NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT)?

In the end, all of those excuses, valid as some of them are, were really just covering up for my main fear: the possibiliy that I wouldn’t like the mother(s) I’d be “stuck” babysitting with. What if our parenting philosophies were radically different? What if we had nothing to say to each other? What if she was judgmental/nasty/obnoxious/snobby/too quiet/too loud/too “mom-ish”…the list went on and on.

When I took a step back, I realized my trepidation had very little to do with joining a babysitting co-op and everything to do with being nervous about meeting new people—people who could potentially become friends. Was I really afraid of not liking them, or was I afraid of them not liking me?

The more I think about it, the louder I hear the voice that says I should conquer this fear if not for my own good but for the good of my son. (”Grow up!” the voice says. “Sheesh.”) My boy is eight months old now and he needs to get out of our house, he needs to play with other babies, he needs to be comfortable in the care of people other than just me and his dad. It struck me then that this is a new kind of parenting sacrifice for me. We’ve done the sleep deprivation, the hygiene neglect, the turning down social invitations because of naptime, but this was novel: I was considering taking a huge leap outside my comfort zone for the sole benefit of my child. (Not that it wouldn’t also benefit me, although I’m still not entirely convinced…) (That’s the fear speaking, there.)

I think of all the things my parents did for me that they probably didn’t want to do. In particular, I think of my introvert father dressing up like a cowboy to take me to the father-daughter hoe-down at my elementary school. (It still counts, even though we skipped out early and went to the mall instead.) I’m still new to this parenting gig, and sometimes I need these reminders that it really isn’t just about me anymore.

So, tell me your tales. How have you been forced outside your (perfectly rational! and comfortable!) comfort zone in the interest of your kids?

We’re smart women, educated consumers, technologically savvy, and always on the lookout for the quickest/easiest/most efficient way to do anything, especially if we think it will help us do what’s best for our kids. But can we all agree that we (the collective, consumerist “we”) sometimes get carried away? That we’re so over-primed—by the media, by our peers, by our own worst fears—to jump on the newest bandwagon and buy the latest gadgets that it’s starting to get a little out of control? This afternoon my better half directed me to this article from Reader’s Digest that pokes fun at some of the newfangled “must-have” parenting products available. The larger implication here—that companies prey on our insecurities, that marketers take advantage of our instinct to protect our families—is a serious topic and an important one, but today I’ll admit that my brain was just fried enough that I couldn’t muster even a modicum of moral outrage and so instead just read the article and nodded and laughed at what fools we mortals be.  

As no-nonsense as I fancy myself, though, I can’t pretend to be immune. My mother, for instance, couldn’t understand why we needed a baby monitor in our tiny house, and a video monitor at that, considering she raised two kids using just her own eyes and ears, thank you very much. (My review of the video monitor: I love it; I want to marry it.) Meanwhile, Simon’s mother sent us one of those fancy shopping cart sanitary covers and, while I appreciate the thought, I…I just don’t know if I’ll ever use it because man, it’s so bulky and so LOUD and so…unabashedly Kiddie-Safety Industrial Complex.

In the end, we all have to pick and choose for ourselves (and try to disguise that guffaw as a cough when one of our friends swears by something we think is ridiculous). One (wo)man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that. As for me and mine, we said Yes to the video monitor and No to the wipe warmer and we waffled about getting a crib bumper at all. (Do we risk (a) the baby suffocating in his sleep or (b) twisting off his foot off between the slats?) We researched the quality of every variety of carseat imaginable, but  when it came to highchairs we chose the one that was on sale and matched our kitchen exactly. In this as in every parenting decision we do what works for our family.

It goes without saying that a lot of good has come out of advances in child safety—seat belts, carseats, playground equipment made of plastic instead of searing hot aluminum—but there’s also a lot of just plain wacky junk out there. What’s the most ridiculous product you’ve seen marketed to parents? And what do you think of my million-dollar idea: designing a chic strap to attach a pillow to a baby’s butt so he doesn’t bruise his backside while he’s learning to stand! Any suckers takers out there?

Since having a baby, my work schedule has been turned upside down and inside out, and I’m still trying to find my groove. I’m working fewer hours at my office job (but harder!), and I’m working more hours at home on whatever freelance projects I can sneak into evenings and weekends and the rare half hours that my seven-month-old actually takes a nap. Most days, I feel like a dog chasing its tail. There’s never enough time to accomplish everything I need to do (forget the things I want to do), and every day I try to start my task list with “Be okay with not getting everything done,” even though, at the end of the day, that usually becomes just one more box I don’t get to check off.

Finding peace in imperfection is a worthy goal, but the truth of the matter is that I can never breathe completely easy while there’s unfinished business piled on my desk, or in the corners of my brain. So, in an effort to do more (and to be more), I’ve started looking for ways to take up the slack, starting with my time online.

On the days I work from home especially, it’s easy to click a link here, post a comment there, and then lose all track of time blog-hopping around the world. It helps that I have the ready excuse of needing to read blogs and magazine articles as “research” for my freelance work, but even I know when I’m abusing that excuse. Even though I’m a huge believer in the value of an occasional diversion (they are not only allowed but necessary to my sanity during the workday), I also know how easy it is to let myself get sidetracked. I’m not on Twitter or Facebook specifically because I know how much of a time-suck those networks can be. And yet, I still find it hard to regulate my computer usage when there’s always so much to see and do.

How do you keep yourself in line while online? Do you set limits for how long you’re allowed to surf? Do you make rules about how often you’re allowed to check your personal email account(s)? Do you consider your non-work time on the computer important and sanity-saving “me time,” or is it mostly just a brainless waste? Are there any tools–technology based or otherwise–that you use to help organize and streamline your online life?

What do you think? Does it sometimes feel like we have to talk only about the bad stuff, the blunders, and the downright failures in order to be part of the motherhood sisterhood? I ask this in response to not only some comments on a previous post but also after watching friends feel hesitant about sharing some of their parenting triumphs. One friend felt weird admitting (admitting!) breastfeeding was easy and she *gasp* even enjoyed it. Another friend was looking for advice on parenting an early reader, but she didn’t quite know how to bring it up without feeling like a show-off. Whether it’s a good work schedule, a helpful partner, a baby who sleeps through the night, a toddler who was potty-trained on the first try, or a teenager who earned straight A’s, all of these are accomplishments (or happy accidents) we should be proud of–and proud to share–without feeling embarrassed or, worse, feeling afraid that someone’s going to shoot us down with the emotional equivalent of posting a ”My kid can beat up your honor student” sticker on their bumper.

It just doesn’t make sense. We put so much effort into raising healthy, happy, smart kids, and we try so hard to find balance in our own lives, but then we’re not supposed to talk about it? I get that misery loves company, but do people really only want to hear about our mistakes and insecurities? Sure, no one likes a braggart, but shouldn’t there be some way for us to publicly celebrate our triumphs (and our children’s triumphs) without feeling vulnerable to attack?

Extra credit: Share something awesome about the way you parent your children. What are you really good at as a mother?