New York Times writer Lisa Belkin talks about the pros and cons of near-fame, as an "expert" on work/life balance—and how her kids know better. Being a writer allows an anonymous version of fame. You rarely need to put on makeup, because when you write, you do so alone in your sweatpants, and when you stop writing and leave your house, only your friends recognize you (and they're used to the fact that you usually look like you've just woken up).

My writing is for The New York Times, where I work for the Sunday magazine and write the Life's Work column for the job market section. The column, about the constant tug-of-war that is life/work balance, often gets personal, as I lay out my own push and pull. That means readers get to know me (every week I trade emails with many), but most of them have never seen me.

Every once in a while someone will recognize my name, like the time I went to pick up an order at the local bakery. But for the most part I get to be famous only to my doting relatives, which is fine with me. It is not, however, okay with my two sons. From where they sit, their mom is simultaneously too well known and not nearly well known enough. Not nearly as visible as needed to do something useful for them—like hobnob with J.K. Rowling—yet far too visible to, say, their teachers, who, the boys are certain, expect more of the children of a professional writer.

Which brings us to what I write. That doesn't work for them, either. Forget that it's utterly embarrassing to have your mother tell the world cute stories about how you sobbed outside her office door the first week she tried to work from home. It's almost as tiring as having everyone think Mom knows all about balance, when you know for a fact that her office looks like it was in the path of a hurricane, and that she seems to regularly forget to plan for dinner, even though that meal comes along every evening at more or less the same time. "Why can't you do normal mommy work?" Evan asked me a decade ago when he was in kindergarten. By that I think he meant I should be like Ethan's mommy, who put on a suit every day and went to an office, or Ryan's mommy, who stayed home and took care of Ryan. What I did recognize, though, was the longing for your parents to do something other than what they were doing—a message I clearly remember delivering myself.

My father was an orthodontist. For the first 12 years of my life, I wasn't exactly sure what an orthodontist did. I once asked him, "Why can't you have an office that my friends actually go to—like a dentist?" Eventually, of course, his was the office that all my friends went to. And while I loved coming home from school to a social gathering in his waiting room (his office was attached to our house), I still had complaints. Specifically, I chafed at being "the orthodontist's daughter," which meant, as I recall, that I couldn't chew gum while wearing braces.

What it comes down to is twofold. First, children will at some point find what we do embarrassing because, well, they will eventually find most everything about us embarrassing. Second, no parent is an expert to an adolescent child. Except maybe rock stars and professional athletes. I console myself with the mantra of all parenting: This too shall pass. Alex, who just turned 12, was told to read a nonfiction book of his choice. He selected First, Do No Harm, the first book I wrote, a tearjerker of a tale about a hospital. He picked it all on his own, no pressure from Mom. (Honest.) But I have to say that nothing in my writing life has tickled me as much as watching him read my words.  "You're a good writer," he told me at bedtime one night. "Even my English teacher thinks so. And she's tough. But you don't really write things that my friends read, do you?"