Mother, like police, judge and father, is both a noun and a verb. Those are things that some of us are and some of us do. Itâs noteworthy that the verb father means little more than begetting, while mother as both noun and verb stirs up a whole ocean of ideas about ceaseless love and nurture and caregiving. The ideal seems so lofty no mortal can live up to it, and while fathers are often praised for doing more than nothing, mothers are often castigated for doing less than everything and for not doing it perfectly. And perfectly, for mothers, tends to mean selflessly, superhumanly, relentlessly. Giving birth is as biological as it gets, but the job assignment from there on out seems to be for a deity or the Virgin Mary.