I think my children know that Mother's priority is to be with them first. But I don't think it has to be an either/or situation. Work is very important to me, and it wouldn't be in the best interest of my children for me to stay home seven days a week.
I have been fiercely private, in part because I could never understand how a journalist could be otherwise. I was also the mother of small children, and security concerns were paramount.
I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.
My son has been known to throw a book at the television set when he called for me to come play and I was obviously busy in the box. But I'm told that children of television performers grow up thinking that all mommies or daddies work on TV and that it's no big deal.
I can cook; but not well. I figure I have six years until my children discover what their friends' mothers make for dinner.
At midlife, I think a woman has more in common with her teenage children than anybody else. We all are kind of uncertain. We realize for the first time in either our lives or decades that we're in charge now.
In the beginning when I sat next to Tom Brokaw on the 'Today' show, the stories I was interested in were those having to do with women and children and learning and health. In those days, 25 to 30 years ago, that was called soft news, and not in a nice way.