I'm driving along, half-listening to NPR, when I hear a sociologist say that whatever they do, parents just need to be at peace with the decisions they make. The less conflicted the parent, the better off the kid.

I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. I feel a little like I did while reading Judith Warner's book, Perfect Madness, which details the insanity of intensive mothering done upper-middle-class style: yes, finally someone is talking about the ways that this ever-evolving myth that there is a perfect way to mother affects the women involved in it. But: why am I feeling so awfully guilt-stricken as I read?

Nearly everyone who reads Warner's book seems to see herself reflected in it ("I wear overalls sometimes; oh, god, I'm one of those child-like women she writes about…" or "I want the best for my kid; oh god, she's writing about me...") and begins to feel bad for trying to be a good mother. Likewise, the same conflicted parents the sociologist was talking about will now add "feel guilty about being conflicted" to the list of ways we fail to measure up to our culture's ideal of a good parent.

Conflicting emotions about parenting decisions are par for the course around here. These lines from the Robert Frost poem "Desert Places" pretty much sum up my daily state of mind: "They cannot scare me with their empty spaces/Between stars—on stars where no human race is./I have it in me so much nearer home/To scare myself with my own desert places." Ambivalence is my middle name on a good day, as my husband will cheerfully attest.

Of course, as a former single father of a toddler, he's no stranger to the myriad ways parents are judged and judge themselves, and as partners in parenting with Vincent's mom, we face the added complication of having a third parent weighing in on much of what we do as parents, while the whole world seems compelled to give its opinions about the horrors of the blended family. This is not a whine about how hard step-parenting, co-parenting, or dealing with an ex are; sure, sometimes difficulties arise. And sometimes we all learn from each other and are grateful there are three of us around to pick up Vincent at school, get him to activities and friends' houses, and bounce ideas off of.

But weird things get said to stepfamilies, in my experience, because of the assumption that somehow this is a less valid kind of family. My favorite example is the neighbor who told me how she didn't want to tell her daughter, age four, that I wasn't Vincent's mother because she didn't want to tell her daughter about divorce yet. (Never mind that Vincent's parents were never married, a fact which I'm sure would have blown her mind, since we "seem like such nice people.") It's hard not to feel judged when basic facts about my family are deemed too icky to acknowledge. A few months later, when her little girl saw Vincent drive by in his mom's car, she began shrieking that Vincent was being kidnapped by a stranger. I didn't envy that mom the conversation she then had to have; all that unraveling of lies and half-truths must have been painful for both of them.

I can't say that I'm more aware of the ways mothers especially are judged because of our situation—you all have your own stories, I'm sure. But it seems like being a stepmother has made me privy to some awfully harsh thoughts about what a "good mother" does and looks like, and this just adds more fuel to the raging fires of insecurity and doubt I like to call my soul.

So, talk about parents feeling conflicted? Nothing new around here. But somehow the sociologist's easy answer—Say no to being conflicted! You children will thank you for it!—bugs me. It's particularly relevant today because I just registered Josie for next fall's kindergarten class at the public school down the street from our house.

This would have been a momentous event no matter what—My last baby! Going to kindergarten! Hooray! Sob.—but her late fall birthday has made us have to think and rethink when she'll enter kindergarten since oh, pretty much the day she was born. Her due date was past the kindergarten entry cutoff date here in California, but she managed to get herself born just before it, which means she's eligible to start this fall at age four.

Since 1) she's our third kid and 2) I'm a teacher, not to mention 3) I'm no stranger to the cult of intensive mothering, we are oh-so-aware of all the arguments against sending kids with late fall birthdays to kindergarten. I've read the research and all the scary articles in mainstream parenting magazines.

Also, I can remember realizing that Vincent, with his August birthday, was one of the youngest kids in his kindergarten class because almost all the boys in his class had been kept back from starting when they could by parents who rightly wanted to make sure their kids were ready for the academic demands of today's kindergarten. Vincent seemed younger than those kids, some of whom were a full year older than him, when it came to tying shoes and remembering his backpack, although the actual schoolwork wasn't a problem for him. For a year or two, we second-guessed ourselves, wondering if he would have been better off starting kindergarten at age six.

He's in fifth grade now, and something odd has happened: he's spent the past four years in a GATE class (and please, let's just save the whole GATE debate for another day; the only thing I know for sure about it is that I'm ambivalent) with a bunch of other kids who have late summer and fall birthdays. He's ended up, in other words, with many of the other kids whose parents started them in kindergarten despite the advice of the experts.

I had to remember Vincent's experiences the other night at the kindergarten information night for Josie. (Why did I feel compelled to go to this for the third time, when even Chip, who loves a boring informational meeting as much as I do, refused to sit his ass in the little primary-colored chairs one more time? Don't ask me. It's the good-girl sickness, I'm telling you.)

Someone sending his first child off to kindergarten asked the innocent question about whether it's worth it to keep younger kids back a year, which led inevitably to the lecture I've heard over and over from the three well-meaning teachers about how no one should even consider sending a four-year-old to kindergarten these days. Kindergarten, apparently, is not for sissies anymore. Kids learn to read in kindergarten now, we were told sternly. But, he asked meekly, it's legal to send a four-year-old to school, isn't it? Yes, it is still legal, they begrudgingly admitted.

All this talk about how academic kindergarten is today is true. I've been through the homework packets and math worksheets with Vincent and Henry; I know what Josie has in store for her. But the idealized kindergarten that gets talked about, the one with naps and puppet shows? I just don't know if I believe that's what all kids everywhere used to have. I believe some kids somewhere had and have that experience. But I remember having phonics readers and learning to read in kindergarten. That was wonderful, because once I learned to read those boring-as-hell readers, I could move on to Little House on the Prairie.

Maybe the fact that I went to a public school just a few miles away from the one Josie will go to accounts for the similarities in kindergarten curriculum. Sure, it's been thirty years, but maybe kindergarten here in this school district hasn't changed much. Or maybe the pendulum had just enough time in those three decades to swing from phonics to whole language and back again to phonics just in time for Josie.

So I'm grateful that Josie is our third child, because otherwise I would have fallen prey to the advice of experts and would keep her back next year. It's taken a long, long time, but I'm getting better at trusting my gut when it comes to what's best for my kids. I did not, for instance, torture myself by looking into all the other school options available to us, the ones we either a) can't afford or b) would have to drive long distances to, which would mean reducing my work hours, which leads us back to a) we can't afford. Henry goes to the local elementary school, the one three houses away from us, and Josie will join him there. And I'll pretend that I never have second thoughts, because we all want to stay sane here in our house, the house where Chip declared a moratorium on discussions about conflicted feelings regarding sending Josie to kindergarten at age 4. (Fortunately, Josie has four friends with late fall birthdays who are all going to kindergarten, too, and their mothers haven't banned me from torturing us all with my ambivalence. Yet.)

She is so obviously ready for kindergarten that it seems like it would be cruel to keep her from starting. When Chip and I compare her fine-motor skills (hint to parents of future kindergarteners: those teachers are ALL ABOUT the fine-motor skills) to Vincent and Henry's at the END of kindergarten, we laugh. Let's just say that if we'd had Josie first, we might have believed the boys were…well, a little slow, if you know what I mean. At this rate, it's totally possible that Josie will teach them how to perfect their shoe-tying skills.

Last but oh, definitely, definitely not least, there's the whole issue of the economic impact of Josie starting kindergarten. Okay, you may not feel it. But we will, because we will stop paying (relatively) huge (to people who think a $50 dinner out once a month is an outrageous extravagance) sums of money each month to her amazing and wonderful nonprofit, co-op preschool. I will earn actual money, rather than what I like to think of as childcare barter units. And yes, children are absolutely worth financial sacrifices, but needless financial sacrifices don't result in anything but martyrs and resentment and other parenting no-nos. Besides, we have less than eight years before Vincent graduates from high school, and the kids' college funds right now are something we like to call The Food They Eat Each Day. Our savings account is a funny joke we make to each other: "Hey, I know! We'll just pull some money out of savings. HA, HA, HA!"

So Josie is going to kindergarten in September. Does this mean I'm all done being conflicted? No, of course not. I'm pretty much hardwired to analyze and consider before I act. But am I going to keep carrying around guilt about having been conflicted? I'm trying not to. (And then I'm going to try not to feel guilty about failing to keep myself from feeling guilty. God, it's exhausting living in my head.) It's so easy for me to want to make every moment of parenting a crucial decision. There's always support for that kind of thinking, too. But the wear and tear on me, on my marriage, and on my kids makes me think that however naïve that sociologist sounded when he so blithely advised listeners to be at peace with their parenting decisions, he still might be right.