Hilary Cosell, Woman on a Seesaw. The Ups and Downs of Making it (1985)

I'm very scared to become a mother. I do want a child, but coming to terms with that desire has meant coming to terms with some very unpleasant realities and some surprising things I'm discovering about myself.

For instance, I always assumed I'd want to keep working full time when I became a mother. I'd go back to work as soon as maternity leave was up, and find day care or a nurse, somebody reliable, to take care of my baby.

Instead, I find myself wanting to leave work and stay at home with a baby for at least a year or so. Now that it's my turn to be a mother and it's my potential child I'm talking about, I really don't think day care is such a good idea. I don't think I could ever trust someone else to take care of my baby eight or more hours a day, five days a week, no matter how much individual attention they promise to my child. I can't escape the feeling that it is very important for a baby to have its mother, or its father if he's willing, available most of the time and be the principal influence on it so early in life.

My husband isn't sure he agrees. He's a victim of the professional-wife syndrome, you know. His identity is wrapped up in my identity as an executive. He likes it, and he likes to brag about it, really, so when I tell him that the thought of being a mother and a full-time professional rather repulses me, it comes as a kind of shock. That's not what he's heard from me for the past ten years.

He does try to understand, but he doesn't really, and why should he, after all the lecturing I've done? We have insane conversations where he shows me how we can work it out, and he starts to budget every minute of our lives and throw around the phrase "quality time". I hate that phrase.

Or else he'll point to four women we know who are professional mothers and he'll say, "See, we can do it too." What he really means is, you can do it too, Beth. I have no doubt that he would be involved and supportive and a good father, but when you get down to the short strokes it seems that a child is always more of a mother's responsibility. I see it clearly with those four women he's always pointing to.

Men might know more than they used to, and be more willing to help when it comes to children, but they really don't seem to know all that much about babies and small children - how much hard work and time they take, and how much drudgery is involved. So part of me has to laugh when I listen to Paul talk about 35 how we'll work it all out with both of us working full time.

It makes perfect sense to him, you see, because all he's doing is describing the traditional father's role to me. You get up, say hello to the baby, have breakfast and leave. You come home at night and say hello and play with the child if it's awake and if not, you glance into the bedroom, give it a kiss, and see it in the 40 morning. You see him on weekends. That's what being a father is.

That's just what his father did, that's what my father did. It worked out just fine, so it's not so easy for him to understand when I say, "Look, Paul, I don't want to be a father. That's your job. I want to be a mother. For a while, anyway."