My daughter sat down in a coffee house, opened up her laptop and said, “Oops, milk on the keyboard.”  No surprise there. With a 10 month old baby, she often pumps while working in her home office.  I smiled and said, “The new working mother.”

She is not exactly like those controversial working mothers who have been so much in the news lately but she understands them. You know, Marissa Mayer, the pregnant and brand new Yahoo exec who said she will work through her maternity leave. And Anne- Marie Slaughter who gave up her state department job to spend more time with her kids and wrote in the Atlantic that working women still can’t have it all.

My daughter Sam, a freelance writer, went back to work within days of giving birth. Her book deadline had been pushed up and she had to get writing. Before I could protest, she said, “I know it’s crazy but please don’t tell me I can’t do this. ”

And she did, scheduling postpartum conference calls with her editor and co-author from her hospital bed and meeting her deadline not three months after delivering a baby boy. But no, she doesn’t go along with the idea that working women should keep pushing right after delivering. In fact she’d advise new mothers to take their three months maternity leave and sit back.

As she says, “the only time working mothers get permission to take time off is during maternity leave.”

I need to add that her husband also thought it a bit ambitious to jump back into the job but she was determined. Too much time off might put her at risk for losing the next project. Now when I ask her when she intends to take a genuine maternity leave, she says, “Soon, maybe 2013.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the one who found it impossible to continue her government job and be at home for her teenage boys, wrote in the Atlantic that younger professional women are right to resent the expectations set by older working mothers. The ones who gave the impression that you could have both super career and super kids.

In the 1970s when I was a new mother I took three months off my reporting job, worried I might be losing career ground, made sure I read the newspaper every day and continued to write  freelance until I went back to the office.

My generation of working mothers felt we had to prove we could do it all – to our bosses, ourselves, society, our own mothers. We didn’t dare relax. Our assignment was to get one high heel in the door and hold it open so others could follow. And we knew if we failed to show we could handle our jobs as well as our kids without complaining we’d mess it up for the next pregnant professional.

Things have improved for working mothers. Better day care. Family sick leave. Some progressive employers offer flexible work hours. More women, like my daughter, work from home and are self employed. That gives them more freedom to juggle their time. But they know the same guilt, exhaustion and worry of every working mama that the baby or the job is getting short shrift.

A nanny has made it work for my daughter. She can write in her home office, take breaks to nurse and pump and check in with her baby who’s in the care of a loving honey-haired Montessori-trained Texan who likes making organic baby food. My generation would have considered a nanny a luxury for rich women. My not-rich daughter set up a nanny budget as soon as she knew was pregnant. It’s a big financial chunk but she says it’s a cost of doing her job.  And staying sane. And being down the hall from her baby.

We both agree with Anne Marie Slaughter that the best thing that could happen for working mamas is to elect a woman president and 50 women senators.  Women with children who know in their tired bones what it really means to put family first.

Please indulge me as I celebrate some women in my family who are helping to raise the next generation. Our daughters, the three sisters. Two mommies and an auntie.

I’m not sure how they learned to act so naturally skilled around babies and small children. Only one was a regular baby sitter. I think it might come from waiting until they were older to get into the baby business. After they figured out their priorities, with family climbing to the top.

I watch our daughters with the kids and wonder where the impatience went. Even the daughter whose famous childhood declaration was, “I hate patience.”  Once she gave birth she became near Buddha-like in her calm attention. Far more laid back than I was in my new mother anxious, overwhelmed years.

Sure, like all mothers they get exhausted by the many demands on their time and energy, but I don’t see them sitting on the curb with a glass of red wondering how they might slip into Mexico before someone called CPS. Of course their kids are still little, not teenagers.

I will not play into the current mommy wars,  but our daughters are working mothers. They work at home and they work at work.  And they are  married to men who do the same.

I don’t think they ever considered not continuing to work when they had children. One’s a teacher. One’s a writer. Their work defines them but so does being a mother. The teacher-daughter returned to her second grade class within months of having her daughter. She did the same after her son was born. The author-daughter delivered both a manuscript and a baby boy in the same month.

It’s amazing that the same people who used to argue the nutritious merits of top ramen and mac and cheese learned to make their own baby food. They would never mix their child’s medicine in orange soda to get them to swallow it…like I did.

Pros at multi-tasking, they make the different parts of their lives work, including play dates for the kids, date nights with the husbands and time at the  gym for themselves. In many ways, I envy them.  Compared to working mothers of my generation, theirs has more societal support.  They can find before and after school care.  They don’t have to make up a phony excuse for their boss to stay home with a feverish child. They have mommy blogs with advice on breast pumping at the office and setting up employer-sponsored child care.

Then comes the rest of the village, in our case lead by super auntie, the third sister, willing to stop in the middle of writing a legal brief to drive across town to save all when the stomach flu hits. But she’s more than backup. She’s a major player in her niece’s and nephews’ lives. She will make sure they all know how to swim, kick box and use the library. The piano’s at her house when they’re ready for music lessons.

It is pretty sweet to watch your kids with their kids. Dancing with a newborn. Explaining the concept of fairness to a five year old. Teaching a two year old how to share a lap with a puppy.

It makes it easy on us grandparents. We’re the side show. We just need to learn baby sign language, memorize a few Mary Poppins’ tunes and promise to abide by the parental rules on glitter paints and cookie rationing. Then we get to  sit back, look at our brood and cluck.

The working mother who squats in the field, gives birth, bundles the baby to her breast and goes back to the job might envy the high-tech working mother who enjoys such luxuries as a portable hands-free electric breast pump. Perfect for the career woman’s busy lifestyle, it allows her to pump while on her computer, putting on makeup, blow drying her hair, making dinner and doing laundry. There is also a car adapter in case the pump battery fizzles while on the road.

Oh, the wonders of modern maternity I thought while sitting in a circle of professional women at a baby shower. It was for my daughter, a full time writer and first time expectant mother seeking advice from her experienced multi-tasking peers. That’s where I first heard of the no-hands pump from a mother of twins who employs it during conference calls and while dashing in a cab across Manhattan to a meeting.

There were no games, as decreed by the mom-to-be, no women putting clothespins between their knees and dropping them in milk bottles. No spinning pencils on a string across the belly to determine the baby’s gender. Of course today’s expectant couples can discover  early on if they’re having a boy or girl.  What’s top secret, I learned, is the name. It is not okay to share potential names and even grandparents-in-waiting will not know until the baby pops out and the parents rip open the envelope and declare, “And the winner is Ezekiel.”

Parents not wishing to burden their child with too common a name can go to a handy website and track the most popular baby names. So far, for 2011, the top four baby boy names are Jacob, Ethan, Michael and Jayden, just in case you wondered. In the early 1970s when I gave birth we had to wait until the last push and the nurse to proclaim “it’s a girl.” But we started blabbing name choices as soon as we found out we were pregnant.

Maternity trends evolve. When I was a working mother I didn’t have a breast pump that you could charge with your car battery.  That didn’t matter because I didn’t nurse. Breast feeding was an alternative but not as routinely expected as it is today.   Natural childbirth was newly in favor and that’s as earthy as I got. My pregnant daughter just now realized that she was a bottle baby. Poor kid thought I was an all-organic mom.

Among her shower gifts was a diaper bag with special compartment for iPod and smart phone. And a stylish nursing cover to layer between her and the public while feeding baby, which everyone in the room but me seemed to know as a hooter hider.

She got a lot of good advice. Someone told her about an app she can get to tell her which breast the baby last fed from. Someone talked about hiring a night nanny, who comes in for occasional night duty to relieve sleep deprived parents. Another mother offered the name of her baby sleep consultant.

But the best advice she got is not much different from what mothers of every generation have told each other. Enjoy it all. Don’t panic. Trust your instincts. Babies don’t break very easily. Take a nap when the baby sleeps. Meditate when the baby sleeps. Slip off for a 30 minute hot bath at the end of the day.

I liked this one, too:  Figure out which restaurants and stores have diaper changing tables in the men’s room so daddy can share that chore.

And oh yes, buy wine in bulk.