Even more important, I want my children to think I'm good. And not just a good mother, but that I'm honest and honorable and that the world is better off for my being in it. So I do the usual things -- if someone gives me too much change, I return the extra money. I give more to charity than I used to, and I talk with my three kids about where I want my money to go, and why.

It's easy to laugh at parents who suddenly acquire new virtues as their children grow: the people who never particularly cared about the homeless before, for example, but are now busy doing parent-child food drives. Or how about all those nonreligious parents who find themselves joining up because the child should be raised with Sunday school or Hebrew school? It's easy to giggle, easy to warn that children are disconcertingly good at seeing right through their parents; you have to do the thing sincerely, or you might as well not bother.

But most of those parents are doing the thing sincerely. You generally don't put yourself and your child through some charitable paces in order to win cosmic-parent brownie points; you do it because you are quite genuinely interested in becoming that more involved, more charitable person yourself -- and bringing your child along with you. And it's not just that you want your child to admire you -- there's something about motherhood that brings out the desire to actually be admirable.

See, I used to think that the moral here was that I tried to be a better person when my children were born but that I'm still the same old less-than-perfect me. This is true, in a way, but it's not the whole truth: Having children and being their mother has changed who I really am.

Maybe I first handed back the extra change to set a good example, but eventually I realized that I don't want to be the kind of person who takes advantage of someone's mistake. I don't give to charity just so I can tell my children that I give money, though I'm not above pointing out charitable morals. But the truth is, most of the time when I give to charity, I'm thinking about other mothers and their children, about people who are sick or in danger or scared, and I'm identifying in a direct and personal way that comes out of my experience as a mother. I feel more in common with people in very different circumstances, and I feel more obliged to try to help.

It was probably foolish to try to change myself by the force of resolution, however sincere the impulse. On the other hand, the experience of child rearing has brought a powerful day-by-day desire to do right by my children, and also to help shape the world into a good place for them to live their lives. I didn't succeed in making myself over for their sakes, but perhaps they made me over a little bit for all our sakes. That may be, in the end, a better story and a more hopeful result.

Oh, and if you hear the doorbell, it's probably my pepperoni pizza. If you wouldn't mind clearing some of those piles of papers off the dining room table, we'll even have a place to set it down -- just don't trip over all the books on the floor. And starting tomorrow, I'm going to get all those papers sorted and filed, and I'm donating a couple hundred of those overflow books to some deserving charity.

That way, when tomorrow night's supper is ready, we'll have a place to serve the tofu burgers, the steamed broccoli, and the whole-grain pilaf. Meanwhile, has anyone seen the Mallomars?

Parenting contributing editor Perri Klass, M.D., is a pediatrician and the author of several books, including Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor.

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