Mothers’ day is a good time to think about the job itself.

I propose moms institute a job-sharing program starting immediately—right after Mothers’ Day. The ideal candidates for this job share: your life-partners and children.

While it’s true that mothering is remarkably rewarding occupation, the secretive but powerful union has not allowed any modifications to an unwritten and onerous contract.

Mothering has been a full-time plus overtime occupation; and the job description has changed little since the second wave or even since the microwave. On top of all the mother jobs, you have to remember to deposit your paycheck after working 40 hours. This makes for seriously tired-out mothers.

The solution is as simple as bringing human resources type thinking to this messy endeavor.

Write down all your jobs and start downloading or outsourcing them—Shopping, cooking, chopping vegetables, laundry (including the collecting, folding and putting it away), making lunches, and filing errant toy parts. FYI, there will most assuredly be no redundancy of tasks.

Then make some fancy HR type charts. Write a job description for everyone in the family and think about incentives for performance.

If you cut your mother work time in half or at least 30 percent, you’ll feel 50% or 30% better.

Most families can’t afford to job share their paid work because they need the money. But everyone can job share in the privacy of home—there’s no loss of income.

Some people have already figured part of this out. It’s called Shared Parenting by some—or just plain fair and square. The words gender equity or aphrodisiac also come to mind.

Kristin Maschka, has written a book about sharing parenting called This Is Not How I Thought It Would Be: Remodeling Motherhood To Get The Lives We Want Today. On a recent conference call, she explained how she and her husband both decided to do 25 hours of paid work per week, sharing responsibilities for the house and children the rest. “We had to break out of our traditional roles, says Mascha. “We were stuck.”

This is no move to take mothering positions away from women. It does not mean overall job loss for women—this new system will just open the field up to other members of the family—furthering their own personal development.

Indeed, Maschka tells a story of her husband before their job-sharing started when he typically worked 80 hours a week; he took their eight-month-old baby to the park and cried, realizing it was the first time he had been alone with his kid. Ever. All the other swing pushing and park-visiting had been done without him.

Just imagine how a father’s job satisfaction would increase by doing more caretaking that makes him feel connected to his children. It gets them to their emotional side that we like so much-- right quick.

Under a job sharing plan, fathers would also have to share some of their assigned activities: if they typically spent 40 minutes reading after the kids go to bed, they would have to cut that time in half giving 20 minutes of reading time to their job-share partner. Same with tossing Frisbees or lego practice.

The positive effects of job-sharing would be even greater for your kids than it is for you.

Think of the sense of independence and mastery school-age children would feel by being sous-chef for a meal. Or by putting their clothes back into the drawer. Is there any reason why we should do so many chores for them? Montessori schools charge a lot of money to assign kids jobs like that. DIY. The more we do FOR our children, the less we teach them and the less we prepare them for a life of participation and meaningful work inside and outside the home.

Performance review are simple: just tell all job-sharing participants they’re doing great and that they’re contracts will be renewed. And their bonus? a happier, less-harried mother.