As that rare creature who navigated her way from child stardom to a successful adult career, Brooke Shields looks back on it all as a fun time, a great opportunity. 

But now that she has a baby of her own, she's wary about having her daughter follow her into the spotlight.

"I just don't want to deny who she is naturally," says Shields, now 39.

"The business is very different now. Kids are a lot more precocious. They're a lot more sexually aware. It wasn't like that for me when I was a kid. We were kids. We really just were kids."

Rowan watches the singing and dancing with wide eyes. ///

Shields says motherhood has made her appreciate comedy -- something she fell into late in her career in the TV sitcom "Suddenly Susan."

"I've just noticed that I'm OK with being happy in my work. I find that it's just as valid if I'm having a good time. I don't have to be suffering for it to be good or for it to be art," she says.

> Associated Press October 25, 2004 / AP photo

But this was sadness of a shockingly different magnitude. It felt as if it would never go away.

..
..

"That part is a great rush for me," she said. "I've gotten a little more stable since I have children in terms of that and wanting to really make my moves carefully for them. 

But it's not for me. If it were just me, I'd just float all over the place, be a gypsy. I can't imagine being in an office in a regimented job, knowing what to expect all day. I don't like that."

Having children changed her whole perspective on life, she said.

"It turned me into a woman. Somewhere I wasn't even a woman to begin with. I was a girl without responsibility who was incredibly selfish to a degree. 

"And having children, for me, freed me so much. It prioritized my life in such an amazing way. I realized what's important and what's not. And I realized I can love more than I ever thought I could. 

"I remember reading a quote once: To have a child is to know what it's like to have your heart walk around outside your body.' That's what it's like."

..
..

Amy Bloom : They were 8 and 10, and my oldest son was grown. When I started, I wrote late at night, after they were in bed. I could do that and get away with it because I'm not much of a housekeeper and I didn't need much sleep. I liked my kids and didn't care much about my house, so it worked.

Initially, there was nothing convenient about writing for me, and there were points when writing even interfered. I'd be in the middle of a sentence and someone needed to go to mall for new shoes, so the sentence would be lost, but I felt my primary, most important job was to raise my kids. 

I did the writing if I had the time, and if I didn't, I would come back to it. My attitude was: "Sooner or later, I will get this page right." ....

If I had to do it again, though, I'd try not to work full time. In the beginning, I had a lot of energy and a belief in writing, so I could do it, but I've never had unlimited time to just write. There were always limits and deadlines, but it's what pays the bills.

Being a mother has influenced the themes I write about, too. ...

But writing with children present is not productive. They really never go away. 

My daughter made a sign for my study door that says "Come in," on one side, and on the other side it says: "Knock first, then come in." That's a perfect description of me as a writer. 

..
..
[One of the things I love about this book is that you're completely 
willing to let Ingrid be evil. It gives the story so much vitality. 
There's not enough of that in literary fiction sometimes.]

Janet Fitch: She's very single-minded. And it's very difficult to be the child of a single-minded person because everything goes one way. They're not good listeners. They don't look at that child and think, "Oh, she seems sad. I wonder what's wrong." 

Ingrid didn't want to open that can of worms because it would limit her freedom. And she was pursuing her own vision of herself. 

We all have some of that, and the more determined we are to do something, the more we have it. 

A child will take up 100 percent of you if you let them. It's only natural for them to want that, to try for that. 

So motherhood's a dance between individual needs and the needs of your child. 

And Ingrid's failing is that she had a child but refused to dance with her. She refused to look at her at any point and say, "What does my child need here?" But she loved her. She loved her in her way.

[Did you worry in writing that character that you were going too far?]

No. I think everyone has an aspect of themselves that doesn't want to care about other people, that just wants the absolute freedom. 

..
..

And Ingrid is willing to sacrifice everything for her individual freedom.

Oh, I enjoyed writing her character because her language was so beautiful. 

And strength of will in a character is the most important thing. If the character has strength of will, you're on the train and they are the locomotive. 

If your character doesn't know what they want, and they're sort of drifting around, then you're pulling the train yourself, which is a lot more work. 

I like Ingrid. I understand her. She's a monster. She has tremendous flaws, but tremendous intelligence and wit and she expresses a certain unspoken desire of many people. 

We're nicer than that, we care more about other people than that, but I think it's understandable on some level. 

If I needed help he gave it without making it into a big favor, and -- this is the central fact -- he did not ever begrudge me the time I spent writing, or the blessing of my work. ...

Ursula K. Le Guin

I had heard a story in my Riverside neighborhood, bordering orange groves and factories, about a group of women deported from a linen plant one morning, and I couldn't get their children out of my mind. Because my mother took in foster kids for twelve years of my childhood, I had seen children waiting for their own mothers. ...

But I couldn't finish the novel until I was thirty-five, and had three daughters of my own. I didn't know until then about the physical pain of being separated from a child, the rocketing back and forth of searing jabs between the hipbones where the child once rested. I knew Serafina, the woman from Oaxaca, would risk crossing the border, would risk rape and robbery and death, to try to find her daughter. 

*Susan Straight.  Highwire Moon

"..the story of a teenage girl, the product of a Mexican mother and an Anglo father, who has spent most of her life in foster homes. When 15-year old Elvia finds herself pregnant, she is compelled to search for her long missing mother, a woman who is equally intent on finding her daughter and who, many years earlier, had been deported back to Mexico." [summary from yourbookshow.org]

"The crux of the book is captured in one line in the novel," Pearson says: "Women hold the puzzle of family life in their heads." ...

"There is nothing more wonderful than children," she says. "Being a mother is a creative act." So is writing a novel, and there were many moments when the two competed mightily in Pearson's life. 

"A man can really focus and tunnel in on a project; a woman is constantly distracted. 

"The largest piece I'd ever written was 5,000 words. This was really an excavation of self, which made it acutely exhausting. I'll never write another." ...

Along with  being successful in her career, Julia is a talented artist and singer. The arts nourish her and yet she feels guilty if she takes time to draw. Julia worries often whether she is "doing the parenting right" and if she's too judgmental. 

She was raised by a mother who could be described as highly critical, inconsistent, and passive-aggressive, and a father who was a talented pianist, extremely perfectionistic, and self-absorbed. 

Her memories of elementary and middle school are quite painful in that Julia was rejected by peers and teased for performing well in her classes. ...

In counseling, Julia is working to reduce her self-criticism and understand her perfectionism. She is seeking a balance between her career, mothering, homeschooling, partnership and art.

from Gifted Women and Motherhood: A Workshop Model by Paula Prober, Advanced Development - A Journal on Adult Giftedness, Volume 8, 1999

........Paula Prober
....
..
*Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Change the World
Without Losing their Friends, Shirts, or Minds -- by Paula Prober

"This book was written for you if you have felt fear, anger, powerlessness, or despair about the state of the earth. It's for you if curiosity, intensity, guilt, and self-examination have been embedded in your personality since you were two years old. It's for you if you have had to injest massive amounts of jello or other dangerous substances to get through the day. It's for you if you left your sense of humor at the Mall of America in 1990."

..
..

Julie Taymor : At one time I wanted that. But I didn't start trying until late, and then it didn't happen. ...

Julie Taymor : I could not. I know I'm missing something, but those who have children are missing what I get to do. 

And frankly, I'm probably missing more of what I dont want than what I do. Some may call me selfish or narcissistic, but I don't want to spend my time going to PTA meetings. ... I'd rather affect children with the work I do.