We get into a lot of trouble when we start thinking of motherhood in terms of work and not as a relationship.

Yes, I think it should be a noun, not a verb. 

It's not surprising that my generation has fallen prey to the Professionalization of Motherhood in which we come to view our children as products, not people.  One has only to look in on the birthday party scene or the school play or the politics of chaperoning a field trip to discover that parenthood all to often becomes a competitive sport.  After all, many of us spent a decade or two earning good money for our labors before our little ones arrived on the scene.  Steeped in the culture of daily briefings, transparency and modern applications of Scientific Management that would make Frederick Winslow Taylor weep with pride, it’s not hard to imagine how we could in turn apply the same ethos to the realm of raising a family.

I’d also submit that this is what makes it so difficult for today’s mother to adjust to motherhood.  After a professional lifetime of reliably receiving detailed performance reviews and immediate numbers-based feedback, suddenly we find ourselves in a vacuum.  Our babies don’t even smile at us for two months, don’t speak to us for the first year or two, and it’s years more until they can hold their own in a thoughtful conversation.  In the meantime, we’re left to trust our maternal instincts, not compare ourselves to others, and just stay the course.  All the while, a lifetime of professional paid work is pulling us to do just the opposite. 

And in the process, we do what we can to grapple with that work the way corporate America has conditioned us.  To outsource it.  To do it more efficiently.  To force our husbands to split it 50/50, as though they are adversaries to be met and conquered at the bargaining table.  But all of these dubious products of the corporate lexicon miss the point.

It's a relationship.  20 years from now, this will be crystal clear.  There will be no denying their in-living-color personhood when they tower over us, all of their facilities finally at their full  command.  The people our children already are will be actualized, our size, the fruits of our labors unavoidably front and center, and we will not be thinking of them as another item on our agenda.  They will be either be people that we have served well or people we have shortchanged.  Plants we've either watered faithfully or neglected.

Okay, okay, I know it's not that simple (kind of).  Katie Roiphe just got into a lot of trouble over at Broadsheet over a slipshod subtitle she didn't write.  But importantly, she suggested that motherhood is more than a box to be checked off by the end of business.  By the way, this paragraph of hers is just about the best description of new motherhood I've ever read:

"You give up everything you are and care about. The books on your shelves are not your books; the clothes hanging in the closet are not your clothes. You are the vague, slow, exhausted animal nursing its young. Anything graceful, original, sharp, intelligent about you is gone. And it is that sacrifice of self, that total denial of the outside world, that uncompromising violence done to your everyday life, that is this period’s appeal. You are transported in a way you will never be transported again; this is the vacation to end all vacations."

The more we think of it as a relationship, the less cleaning up we'll have to do in ten or twenty years when our children start reflecting ourselves back to us over the loudspeaker.  The less we'll have to grapple with the ethics of blogging boundaries, like this incendiary discussion on Motherlode this week, inspired by another incendiary discussion on Motherhood last week.  Frankly, the whole thing left me weary.

So I propose this: Let's just start thinking of our children as people NOW, skip that whole Cat's in the Cradle myopia and take the long view.  Parenthood is about relationship-building, not efficiency.  It's about richness of experience, not expediency.  It's about shaping the contours of our children's character, not just their G.P.A..'s and their output.  The best children's message T-shirt I ever spied implored: "Be patient with me.  God's not finished with me yet."  I endeavor to avoid the judgmental set that doesn't understand that.  Our children are subject to our teaching and our influence - more completely than we prefer to pretend - but they are our earthly equals, and we should treat them that way from the beginning.

Don't believe me?  Then go ahead and trash your children in mixed company in the name of catharsis and connection.  They're two and they'll never pick up on it, right?  Or blog about their latest foibles and pretend that their future employers and in-laws won't know how to google.  Post to that "private" list and imagine that your heated words won't ever be unearthed by your curious future teenager.  But do not complain to me when they complain about you the way you used to complain about them.  So can we not start these relationships on the wrong foot?  Can we STOP thinking of it in terms of work, even if we're reeeeally tired at the end of the day?  Can throwing our children under the bus finally go out of vogue?  Can the steady stream of articles in widely circulated national magazines de-permeate themselves of thinly veiled contempt?  Parenthood is a state of being - and if we must infuse the private sphere with the rhetoric of the public, let's use the words "long-term investment" and "research and development" to describe what we're doing.  Maybe that would sound more palatable, and maybe that would feed our well-conditioned needs for significance and recognition.  Or maybe we should just drop the deadening corporate ethos of the working world entirely.  I'm here to suggest we'd be better off if we did.