So I failed utterly in my efforts to transform Emilia into a crime-fighting strawberry with royal lineage, in part because I just couldn’t figure it out (some of you had very good suggestions involving pillowcases, but, alas, we do not have red pillowcases and I did not have time to acquire red pillowcases, and also, who has red pillowcases? Don’t those imply red bedding? WHO HAS RED BEDDING?), and also in part because by the time I got home Monday evening Emilia had already decided that the quality of her costume mattered less than the speed with which she could launch herself into trick-or-treating and was having none of my suggestions about how to turn ‘Strawberry Shortcake’ into ‘Her Royal Highness, SuperBerry.’ She just wanted to get out there. Cramming her into one of my red sweaters and going at it with a Sharpie would just slow her down.

So she declared herself ‘Super Strawberry Shortcake’ and insisted that despite her lack of a cape, she was indeed a superhero. Jasper, The Cowardly Lion, was her sidekick.

Which is great and all, but still: I felt guilty about not having been fully available to plan and execute their Halloween costumes. I still feel guilty. I know that I’m supposed to forgive myself my maternal limitations, but this working mom thing (this working away from home working mom thing) is still pretty new to me, and it’s hard to distinguish what’s a real, understandable, everyone-goes-through-this kind of limitation, and what’s an oh, hey, you’re screwing up limitation. I worry that my limitations are more of the latter variety. Sure, I could only get home when I got home, but couldn’t I have gotten their costumes fully ready on the weekend? Couldn’t I have better supported my husband in working on their costumes by, say, explaining (he’s never before been in charge of costumes/wardrobe) how to navigate Emilia’s sartorial indecisiveness? Couldn’t I have done something better? Am I doing this all wrong?

I know better than this, of course. I know that I shouldn’t judge myself so harshly. But, but… if I don’t judge myself, if I don’t regularly ask myself how I am doing, if I don’t set expectations for myself and try to meet them, am I not letting myself – am I not letting them – down?

The measure that I’ve set for myself, of course, is one that considers only the amount of love that I express, and the integrity of the care that I provide. But Halloween costumes aren’t constructed out of love, no matter how eloquently I can insist the contrary. Emilia had a wonderful time in the costume that she contrived for herself, but what would have I done if she hadn’t? What will I do when she doesn’t?

How will I answer her when she asks why I wasn’t there? How will I answer myself?

The New Kids On The Block were never really my jam when I was younger. I was more into Depeche Mode and and The Cure and adorable boy bands just weren’t, you know, emo enough for me. That said, I did know who they were and I did, maybe, know all the words to Step By Step, because I do know a catchy rhythm when I hear it. Also, I did think that Jordan Knight was kind of cute, although you would never have been able to wring that confession out of me, even on pain of smashing all my Smiths cassettes.

And, wouldn’t you know, knowing all the words to Step By Step came in handy when, at the ripe awesome age of 41, I found myself singing that song on a karaoke stage with Jordan Knight. In a SuperGirl costume, of course, because that’s how you do these thing. (Read more at Bad Mother Confidential, where there is VIDEO EVIDENCE. Video evidence that was posted at ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.)

So the other day there was this post on Jezebel about this photograph of Kate Moss and her daughter that had been photoshopped in the weird way that magazine photos usually get photoshopped, and although it wasn’t a particularly interesting post – I like their ‘Photoshop Of Horrors’ posts, generally, but more to gawk at than to, you know, think about – the comments were very interesting, because the commenters, many of them, thought that the photo in question was a uniquely disturbing photo. Because Kate and her daughter were embracing. TOPLESS. THE HORROR.

(I am not horrified by toplessness. Well, at least not by toplessness on persons other than myself. Most of the time. I could go topless. Maybe. Read the rest of this post at Bad Mother Confidential to find out more. There may or may not be further mention of boobies. I’m not promising anything.)

I was never one of those little girls who played with dolls and dreamed of becoming a mommy. When I played with dolls, it was to concoct new adventures for Barbie, International Super Spy, or to host global summits on world peace with George, my stuffed monkey, the Bionic Woman, a clutch of plush kittens and puppies and Raggedy Ann and Andy (Barbie was never invited, of course, because she was actively working to subvert the stability of the international political system through her mercenary intrigues.) Playing ‘mommy’ never occurred to me, because I never planned on becoming a mommy. Why become a mommy when there were so many much more fun things to do? Travel! Spy! Rule a small country!

My soft aversion to motherhood continued through my twenties and into my early thirties, for more or less the same reasons. I had more interesting things to do than become a mother. I had more fun things to do. Children would just slow me down. Children would be a drag. But then I spent a week with my nephew, Zachary – we flew him across the country to have a holiday with us, as a special treat – and we had such a fantastic time, such an unqualified blast, that I was forced to change my perspective. Kids, Zachary taught me, could be great fun. I decided, then, that I could see myself – that I could see us, my husband and me – with children.

So we had kids. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I’ve found motherhood very challenging at times, so the punchline that you might expect to come after ‘so we had kids‘ is probably ‘… and everything changed‘ or ‘… and I learned that motherhood is not just fun and games‘ or ‘… and I realized how much I missed my f***ing Barbies.‘ Or some such. But here’s the thing: as difficult as parenting can be at time – at most times, even – it’s still a hell of a lot of fun. So much so, that I’d argue that I am a much more fun person – and that I have much more fun – since becoming a parent than I ever did before.

For example…

1.) I have a far greater appreciation for a glass of wine (or a martini, or margarita, or whatever tipple is on offer.) Before you have children, you can go out for drinks whenever you like. You can stay in for drinks. You can stay up late drinking drinks and then sleep in the next day, if it’s a weekend. But once you become a parent, your entertainment schedule is dictated by the needs of your small people, and it usually gets reduced to evenings in watching Thomas the Tank Engine. Which sounds like drudgery, but you know what? It increases your appreciation for those occasions when you do go out, and – this is no small thing – it introduces you to the unique pleasure that is sipping Cabernet and snarking on Dora. After the kids have gone to bed, of course. Because, yes, you do still have Nickelodeon on at that point. Which leads me to…

2) You watch kids’ shows, and you like it. I’m totally not joking. Sure, some kids’ shows are unwatchable (Barney, Caillou), but some of them are kind of fun, or at least fascinating, in a late modern cultural studies kind of way (there could be whole graduate seminars on the critique of late capitalism that is immanent in any given episode of the Teletubbies.) And if you keep your DVD shelf, or your iTunes library, stocked with old episodes of Sesame Street or the Muppets or Fraggle Rock, you will have hours of awesome viewing.

3) You go to animated movies and enjoy them unironically. Come on. Like you’d have seen Toy Story 3 in the theater and giggled and clapped and wept unabashedly if you didn’t have kids.

4) You dance. I know that you do. I have two small children and I have done more dancing – in the living room, in the backyard, in the kitchen, in the bathtub (yes), in pretty much every possible domestic location, to pretty much every kind of music imaginable – in the last five and half years than I did in the first 34 years of my life.

5) You sing. Just substitute the word ‘singing’ for the word ‘dancing’ in the paragraph above, and you get the picture.

6) You make friends. When you’re pregnant, you make eye contact with other pregnant women and, if you’re brave, you make conversation (“don’t you hate swollen feet! I so hate swollen feet!”) just because, oh, god, there is someone who knows what you’re going through! YOU MUST TALK TO HER! Once the baby comes, you become even braver. You join moms groups. You initiate playdates. You make small talk with the other parents on the subway or on the airplane or in the waiting room. You are out there. And sure, maybe not all of these people are your social soul mates, but then, neither were all those random people that you went clubbing with in the 90′s, either. And at least now, you’re sober.

7) … mostly sober, anyway.  See #1, above. The bonus here is, that because, as a parent, you’re never over-indulging (at least when the kids are in your care; what you do on that couples-only Mexican vacation while the kids are with the grandparents is your own business), you’re not getting hangovers. Because, really, you can’t have hangovers when you have kids, because they will wake you at 6am and make you watch Barney and you can’t survive that on a hangover. So you don’t over-indulge, and you don’t get hangovers, and you do appreciate the brilliance of a single, perfect glass of Cabernet, and it is enough, and it is awesome.

8.) You seek and find opportunities for play. You keep a keener eye out for parks and playgrounds, obviously, but you also notice which trees are good for climbing, whether a given hedge makes for a good hiding spot, whether egg cartons or empty toilet paper rolls or empty water bottles or scraps of paper would make for good crafts, whether a particular configuration of furniture would make for a good blanket fort, whether pancakes can be made into fun shapes, whether a given puddle is good for splashing (trick statement! ALL puddles are good for splashing!) You view the world through the eyes of a creature who seeks constantly to play. You view the world through the eyes of your child.

Helmets recommended.

9) And if you’re uninhibited enough, you indulge in those opportunities for play. And come on: if anything can loosen one’s inhibitions, it’s the presence of children. Especially the presence of one’s own children. Show me a grown-up who became more inhibited after having children, and I will show you a parent who is doing it wrong.

10) And when you’re done indulging your loose inhibitions, you have an excellent excuse for having that lovely glass of wine. “That was exhausting!” you declare to your spouse / neighbors / random people at the playground, as you clamber out of the sandbox / off the slide / away from the craft corner / off the roller coaster / out of that Snow White costume. “I’ve earned this glass of Chardonnay!” You don’t need to tell them that you’ve been having the time of your life. If they’re parents, they probably already know.

I haven’t even touched on the joys of cavorting in sprinklers, playing at water parks, visiting Disneyland and enjoying it unironically, roasting marshmallows over campfires, playing Barbies, going trick or treating at Halloween, leaving out cookies and milk for Santa at Christmas, hiding Easter eggs at Easter, throwing birthday parties with lots and lots of balloons and really sugary cake. Sure, you could do all these things before you have kids, but you probably won’t, because you’re too busy being a grown-up, and also, lone grown ups playing at water parks and riding the Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups and trick or treating are regarded with suspicion. It’s kids that give you reason and the excuse and the inspiration to do ridiculous and ridiculously fun things.

The party doesn’t stop when you have children, people. It just gets better. Sure, you’ll be exhausted, but isn’t that the effect of any great party? And like I said: NO HANGOVERS.

This post is sponsored by UP ALL NIGHT… Life is all about balance. So what happens when you throw a new baby into it? Find out; series premiere Wednesday September 14 on NBC.

A couple of years ago, I received a very sweet e-mail from a self-professed ‘dedicated lurker’ who asked the following question: I wonder if you are ever concerned that your daughter’s (beautiful) image will remain in cyberspace, with no mechanism for you — or her — to reclaim it or her privacy?

She meant no disrespect by the question, she insisted; she just wanted to know. And she had been, she admitted, afraid to post the question as a public comment, because she was afraid of being misunderstood as judgmental. I understood her concern. The question makes a clear point: shouldn’t I have second thoughts about posting my daughter’s image, about sharing that image with strangers? Should I not be more protective? I have asked myself these questions many times. I have asked myself these questions countless times over the last few years.

I have not come up with any easy answers, but neither have I stopped posting pictures – and video – of Emilia and, now, her brother. Because even though, at the end of the day, I haven’t got an answer that fully responds all of the questions related to the ethics of posting pictures of one’s children online, I have come to the conclusion that I am acting within reasonable bounds of care when I post images of my kids. Those questions, and how I try to answer them for myself, would probably take two or three posts that I’m not up for writing about right now. What I am interested in writing about right now, however, is this question: why do I post pictures of my kids?

In his Camera Lucida (Reflections on Photography), Roland Barthes distinguishes between the studium of a photograph – that is, those elements of a photograph that provoke an interpretive (cultural, social, political) response – and the punctum of a photograph – that is, the element of a photograph that punctures, or wounds. The punctum, in other words, provokes an emotional response in the viewer by establishing a direct relationship between the viewer and the subject of the photograph. The punctum is, I think, the best argument for posting pictures of our families: I seek out photographs of other people’s children for the punctum; I post pictures of my children for the punctum.

I post pictures of my children, and I seek out pictures of other parents’ children, because these photographs establish a relationship. I seek out those relationships as photographer, and as mother: I seek the poignant moment of understanding, the punctum, in photographs of other mothers’ (and fathers’) children; I look at those pictures and imagine that I see what those other parents see. I admire the curve of a cheek, the ridiculous angle of a pigtail, and I imagine that that was the detail that moved the photographer, the parent, in the moment that they clicked the shutter. I imagine that I see, in your photographs, for an instant, your child, through your eyes, and I am punctured by that moment – that fleeting moment – of connection. In that moment, I feel that understand you, because I understand, viscerally, your love for your child. I recognize our shared experience of intense, inexpressible love. I want to share my own experience of that inexpressible love with you, with someone. So I post my own pictures.

I want you to see and feel the details that I cannot adequately put to words. I want you to smile, suddenly, involuntarily, at the expression of quiet joy on Emilia’s face as she races she tilts her head to balance the silly blue wig perched there. I want that single, damp strawberry curl at the crown’s edge of Jasper’s forehead to grab at your heart and squeeze it, hard. I want the detail of the droplets of water in every bath photo and every swim photo to call to mind for you every bath and every swim that you have ever taken with your own child. I want these photographs to puncture the distance between us as parents, different people with different children, different lives. I want you to see my children through my eyes, to know my love for them, to recognize it as your own love for your own children. I want you to be punctured. This is not what Barthes meant, exactly – for Barthes, the photographer is absent from consideration in the experience of punctum, such that the only relevant relationship is that between the subject of the photograph and the individual who beholds the photograph. But we parents-as-performance-artists cannot separate ourselves from those beings that form the very core of, the very reason for, our art: we hold them out to each other as mirrors-cum-camera lucidae – can you see yourself in my child? Can you see me in my child? See how my child looks at me, and how I look at my child! See what I see! See how I love! See how we love!

My reader worried that I expose too much, that we expose too much. I continue to worry about this, too. But I also feel, deeply, that the exposure – the candor, intentional and accidental – is necessary to our connections, to the humanity of the communities that we build, across universes of difference. I feel, deeply, that I would lose something, that we would lose something, if we kept ourselves and our children (these unique beings who are also and always extensions of myself) behind our fences, safe as houses, concealed from view.

Do you post pictures of your kids, on a blog or on Facebook or through a social networking application like Instagram or through an open Flickr feed or, you know, in any manner? Do you worry about privacy issues? Or do you, like, shove these aside, sort of, the better to pursue the shared experience of storytelling that pictures offer?

(Also: if you are a photograph-poster, check this out: the good folks at Intel Canada are giving away a brand new i5 laptop for the best example of a Visual Life; all you have to do is post your photographs to show how you ‘live visually.’ Check it out here.)

(Also, also: this post reworks some ideas that I explored in a post a few years ago, on which my thinking has moved forward a bit, but also, in some ways, not moved forward at all. So if this chatter about Barthes sounds familiar, that’s why.)

Here’s a little public service announcement: if you are a mom with a new baby, and you see me in public, you should steer clear of me, because I will terrorize you.

Me (seeing a baby at a cocktail party for a recent business conference): “Oh, my god, your baby is so adorable. SO ADORABLE. Can I sniff her head?”

Mildly Alarmed New Mother: “Um, thanks. And, yeah, okay, sure, I guess.”

Me: sniffs baby head.

Mildly Alarmed New Mother: smiles awkwardly.

Me: “She smells like cookies. Or cupcakes. Both. SO YUMMY.”

Slightly Less Alarmed New Mother: “I know, right? Babies do smell yummy.”

Me: “I could eat a baby. I mean, I wouldn’t, obviously. I nibbled on my own baby’s toes a few times, sure, but I wouldn’t actually eat a baby.”

Slightly Confused New Mother: “Oh, um, sure, yeah…”

Me: “I mean, babies are totally edible, though. Which is why vampires could never have babies. Like that whole sub-plot in the Twilight series where vampires have babies, that’s just, like, totally implausible. Because if a vampire had a baby a vampire would totally eat that baby, if not right away, then just as soon as that baby got the chunky baby thighs. They just wouldn’t be able to help themselves. I mean, I am totally not a vampire, and I want to chew on babies, and if a real non-vampire person is tempted to nosh on some baby, then, really, an actual vampire would totally not be able to help themselves. They would totally eat their babies. I don’t think that anyone can argue with that. It’s just fact.”

At that point – I probably don’t even need to add this detail – she backed away, very, very slowly. Which I get, totally. If there’s one thing that you don’t want to hear from a stranger who has just huffed your baby’s head, it’s that that stranger can imagine eating your baby. I understand that.

In my defense, though, it was one of those environments – conference, cocktail party – into which, I think, if you bring a baby, you should expect that baby to get attention, and baby-attention, in my experience, usually involves lots of cooing and warbling. And I did ask permission to sniff that baby’s head; I mean, you don’t just go ahead and sniff another person’s baby, because that’s bad manners. Again, granted, I should maybe have not have followed up the head-sniff by suggesting to that mom that if I were a vampire, I would totally have eaten her baby, but still. I stand by my argument. Vampires would totally eat babies if vampires were allowed anywhere near babies, which is why there could be no such thing as vampire babies. That’s just science.

I think.

It always seems like a good idea, when the opportunity arises, to take my kids on trips with me. This week, in particular, it seemed like a fantastic idea: take the kids and the long-suffering husband to Universal Orlando to hang out with some other social media families and drink Butterbeer and shriek accio twitter followers! at each other. That is, it seemed like a fantastic idea, until my children embarked on a days-long rampage of decibel-breaking, honey-badger-worthy, fit-pitching terror, during which it has seemed that their sole reason for living has been to test the limits of my emotional and psychological endurance.

Those limits were breached some days ago. I’ve given up. I’m just dragging them to Florida to set them loose among the alligators.

No, not really. That would be cruel to the alligators.

I’m kind of a Mother’s Day curmudgeon. I’m one of those grumpy moms who says, when asked what I’d like for Mother’s Day, ‘a day off,’ because, seriously, isn’t spending a day not being a mom the very best way to spend the day on which motherhood is celebrated? The thing is, when I say this, I don’t really mean it. I don’t actually want a day off from being a mom. Sure, I’d love to have a day  or an afternoon all to myself in which I get to lay on the sofa and eat chips and watch Buffy reruns (you are shocked, shocked to hear this, I know), but I wouldn’t really want my family to disappear for that day. I’d rather that they just, you know, mostly occupy themselves in some space adjacent to my relaxation space – go to the park, play in the yard, clean their rooms, that kind of thing – and make periodic appearances to give me hugs and tell me how awesome I am as I lay there in all of my chip-munching, Buffy-watching, slothful glory. Which, okay, is kind of like taking the day off from motherhood, but not entirely, because key to this whole scenario is that I still get to enjoy all of the awesome of being a mom (toddler kisses, general adoration) with none of the work.

Also – full disclosure – I actually like Mother’s Day brunches, because they involve all of the awesome of regular brunches but also usually include mimosas and smoked salmon and no-one is allowed to give you the stink-eye if your children misbehave. And I like the cards that my kids make me, and I also like flowers. So, yeah. A day on which I was permitted to sleep in, then taken to brunch and showered with cards and flowers and then given free and independent reign over the living room sofa and television would really be my ideal Mother’s Day. But don’t tell anybody that. Except my husband, maybe, but he should already know that when I say ‘nothing, just a day off, God‘ and wave my hands in exasperation, what I really mean is ‘cards and flowers and brunch and a bag of chips and for you guys to go amuse yourselves while I watch Buffy reruns but also for you guys to come hug me between episodes so that I don’t get lonely, okay?’

Anyway. Here’s me chatting about what I want for Mother’s Day with Heather and Heather at Momversation. I only get sort of curmudgeonly. I totally don’t admit to the brunch thing, though.

What do you really want for Mother’s Day? You can say ‘a day off.’ You can mean it, too.

(And if you’re looking for something different to do to mark Mother’s Day, consider participating in this little project. It’s kind of awesome.)

Being a parent means never having to say you’re sorry for making your children pose with giant dead-eyed Furries.

“Parenting is the most selfless institution in the world.” The words jumped out at me from the screen. Most selfless? In the world? I sipped my coffee and considered the ethical calculation that would rank me as more selfless than, say, Mother Teresa.

Maybe, I thought. I can see that. Mother Teresa, after all, never went four years without sleep, nor, I’m pretty sure, did she ever suffer mastitis and have to stuff cabbage leaves down her shirt just keep another human being properly fed.

I read on.

“And it’s the parents’ job to put their children’s interests before their own. Forever.” Ah. Wow. I put my coffee down and adjusted my self-regard. Always? Forever? Really? Maybe I’m not more selfless than Mother Teresa. Maybe I’m – wait for it – actually selfish. Because I don’t think that I should always and forever put my children’s interests before my own, always and forever, no exceptions. Which probably means that my form of parenthood is not the most selfless institution in the world. And that’s fine, really, because I don’t – having thought about it over all of four cups of coffee now – think that it should be.

This doesn’t mean that I think that parenthood is a selfish enterprise – except for the ways in which it is selfish (who among us had children for selfless reasons? Becoming a parent is, arguably, fundamentally selfish; it is, after all, an exercise in expanding and enriching our own lifeworlds) – it means that I think that a) the relationship between selflessness/selfishness in the practice of parenthood is complicated, and b) contrary to the assertion of John Cave Osborne in the post that I cite above, parenthood – my own experience of parenthood, anyway – is about me. Well, mostly, and in certain specific contexts, some of the time, which is enough to complicate matters sufficiently that I have to disagree with him.

I have, in the course of my parenthood thus far, practiced a certain degree of selflessness. I breastfed my children, even though breastfeeding was very difficult for me. I get up in the middle of the night if they cry out, even though I would much prefer to sleep through the night. I set aside my own activities when they need my care and attention, which is a lot of the time, because they are, after all, children, as opposed to plants, or even cats. But as selfless as these things might be, they are also, in certain important ways, fundamentally selfish, inasmuch as they feed my sense of self as a mother – I could not imagine, in my self-conception as a mother, not attempting to breastfeed my children, or not getting up to attend to them in the night – and as they provide me with a certain amount of complicated and exhausting happiness. I selflessly run to them in the night; I selfishly hold them close long after they’ve fallen back asleep.

But I am a selfish parent in certain less poetic ways, too. I weaned Jasper early, so that I could take better medication for depression, and so that I could get more sleep. I put them in daycare a few days a week, so that I can write. I put them in front of the television or stick an iPad in their hands so that I can have a few extra minutes to spend with their father or with a good book or with a nice glass of Cabernet in the bathtub. I leave them to travel. I do not put them first a thousand tiny ways that I could not even begin to summarize here. And although I can rationalize those me first moments as indulgences in selfishness that are necessary for my own well-being and for the well-being of my marriage – Mommy needs alone time to be happy; Mommy and Daddy need alone time to be happy; Mommy and Daddy both have non-parenting needs that need to be fulfilled if they are to be the happy, well-rounded people that they need to be in order to be happy, well-rounded parents – at the end of the day the primary reason for putting myself first is because, well, it feels good and sometimes even necessary to put myself first, even if it is not in the most complete best interest of my children. My rationale for pouring a glass of wine and taking it into the bathroom and closing the door is not that it is, all things considered, best for the children. It’s that it is best for me, full stop.

The same is true of my writing: I can say – and have said, on many an occasion – that I believe that my practice of writing about my experience as a mother makes me, in some ways, a better mother, inasmuch as it compels me to be to be all the more self-reflective about my motherhood and all the more attentive to my children, but I do not write in order to be a better mother. Being a better mother – if it does, in fact, make me a better mother, which is debatable – is incidental to the purpose of my writing, which is that I enjoy it. I enjoy it, in part, because I am fascinated by the experience of motherhood and am fascinated by my own children – and this fascination, I think, does correlate to a richer and more engaged personal experience of motherhood – but I enjoy it mostly because I love to write, and because I cannot imagine not writing, and, yes, this means that sometimes my children do come second to the writing, and that I do, sometimes, shut my door against them and leave them with their father or at the daycare in order to write and that, my friends, is entirely selfish.

So it is that when Osborne says, of parenting, that it is not about me, it is selfless, it is the parents’ job to put their children’s interests before their own, forever, I have to pause. I agree in some limited principle, of course: my children are first, always, in my heart, and consideration – consideration – of their interests comes before anything and everything that I do. But my love for my children and my consideration of their interests does not override, entirely, my other loves and considerations. I would throw myself in front of a bus for my children – I would, no question, sacrifice my flesh-and-blood life for theirs, in an instant, without thought – but I will not sacrifice the full living of my life in the service of what might be their ‘best’ interests. It might be in their ‘best’ interests for me to devote myself full-time to their care and education and amusement – I’m not convinced that this is true, but for the sake of this argument let’s assume that it could be – but insofar as those interests don’t coincide with my own interest in living a rich and balanced life, I won’t do it. I cannot be a mother without being myself; I will not be myself if I sacrifice myself entirely on the altar of motherhood. I must, in other words, consider my own interests alongside those of my children in any decision that bears upon my motherhood if I am to be the kind of mother that I want to be – the happy mother, the fulfilled mother – if I am to be the only kind of mother that I can be.

Again, it is possible to argue – it is important, perhaps, to argue – that the happy, fulfilled parent is the best parent, and I believe that, firmly. But that argument is incidental here. I would make the choices that I do even if it could be demonstrated that the less-happy but more self-sacrificing parent were the better parent (whatever that means), that my children would be better off – by whatever measure – because my happiness and fulfillment are important to me, and because my own experience of parenthood is richer, I think, for the fact that I allow room for such considerations and that I refuse to be self-sacrificing. That this makes me, in my own opinion, a better parent is convenient for me, but it is not the primary consideration. The primary consideration is my own happiness. Full-borne selflessness would make me unhappy, and I don’t want to be unhappy. Full stop.

Which is not to say that I would pursue my own happiness if its pursuit were in any way harmful or detrimental to my children; the pursuit of my own happiness (by which I do not mean happiness qua pleasure, but happiness in the Aristotelean sense of eudaimonia, or wellness in spirit) does not and will not come at the cost of my children’s reasonable happiness. It might come at the cost of the best or highest happiness that I can provide to my children – my children might, for example, be happier in a fuller sense if we lived in the countryside and I kept them at home and stayed by their sides, always, reading them fairy tales in the original old German and baking them organic pies with apples that we plucked together from the trees in our very own orchard – but I think that that’s a reasonable trade-off. It is not my job to guarantee their best happiness, even if it were possible, which it’s not. It’s my job to facilitate their reasonable happiness, and to care for them, and to love them. I do these things very well, I think.

This is not, of course, what Osborne meant when he cautioned against parental selfishness. He was cautioning against forgetting ourselves as parents, against neglecting to be mindful of the interests of our children when we comport ourselves as our selfish and self-interested selves. He was reminding us that when we become parents, we can no longer make decisions or take action without giving consideration to the implications and consequences of those decisions and actions for our children, and he’s right. When we become parents, we lose the luxury of being mindlessly selfish, of forgetting any consideration of interests beyond our own. We must always consider what impact will this have upon my children? and will this undermine their happiness in a way that I cannot or should not tolerate? We must always make our choices with their well-being at front of mind. We must always take each step, around them or toward them or away from them, in love.

But that doesn’t mean that we must be all be Mother Teresa. God forbid.