Motherhood in the United States is a negotiated performance for women who both create and contest the discursive structures that shape their experiences. Rhetorical analysis of ethnographic interviews with diverse mothers asked to reflect on the terms “focus” and “balance” as they relate to their negotiation of personal and professional responsibilities revealed a pattern of conflict between language and temporal experience. Caught between the rhetorical mandates of a culture predicated on anthropologist Edward Hall's concept of “monochronic” or “M-time” (linear, segmented, task-oriented)—and the experience of mothering, which relies on what Hall calls “polychronic” or “P-time” (relational, fluid, multitasked)—the women interviewed exhibit what we term “relational attention,” a rhetorical strategy that enables them to navigate successfully between these competing temporal modes, but one which they struggled to name. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]