I saw this article this morning, and found it really interesting. Especially:

"The verb “to parent” didn’t enter the American lexicon until 1958. It’s telling that this is the only familial role to be verb-ified: although a woman would never say, “I need to daughter better,” she might say, “I’m working on my parenting.” A daughter is only something you are, but parenting is something you do. (“Mother” and “father” are also verbs, though it’s noteworthy that only one of them is a job. “Mothering a child” is a form of parenting, an all-consuming personal vocation, while “fathering a child” is a one-off event.)"

"Because women still do the bulk of the childrearing, the scientization of parenting weighs most heavily on mothers. It has fueled what sociologist Sharon Hays calls “intensive mothering,” in which, as Hays writes, “the methods of appropriate child rearing are construed as child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally-absorbing, labor intensive, and financially expensive.” Intensive mothering has become the standard ideal, the paradigm of “good mothering,” against which all mothers are measured. The intensive mother is the mother who knows developmental stages and toy recalls and car seat requirements. She answers every midnight cry. Her kid never falls into a gorilla exhibit. She mothers so fully, so completely, that her child is sculpted into a perfectly developed human to whom only wonderful things happen, because the good mother enables only wonderful things."

and

"And maybe that’s the ticket, as they say. In All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting, Jennifer Senior suggests that today’s professionalization of parenting is actually a response to women’s liberation. Senior argues that there is an “enduring link,” as she puts it, between women’s increased independence and the cultural pressure for women to be “more attentive” in their mothering. She quotes Sharon Hays: “Whenever the free market threatens to invade the sanctity of the home, women feel greater pressure to engage in ‘intensive mothering.’”

Still processing it all (and of course, thinking about how it should or shouldn't change my mothering while I'm also at work...), but curios about others' thoughts.

ETA link: https://theestablishment.co/how-parenting-became-a-full-time-job-and-why-thats-bad-for-women-3c1f5eea1c92