In separate but overlapping narratives, 3 women composition teachers ponder some of the challenges female instructors face in defining their role for themselves and the students they teach. Students and women instructors both experience considerable confusion over what role the woman instructor fills; both parties view her too often not only as a teacher but as a mother too. Teachers, meanwhile, too often find themselves accepting these extra, motherly responsibilities. They feel too much for their students and assume too much responsibility for the quality of their work. This confusion suggests how important it is for women teachers to invent new roles for themselves, roles that are appropriate to them, specifically as women. Could women instructors think of themselves as midwives, people who assist others but can only, by definition of their role, do so much, people who cannot be blamed for failures? Perhaps, but midwives are not widely respected in Western culture and, being women, are not adequately paid for their work. Still, the effort to generate an alternative model is worthwhile. Some recent directions in writing classroom pedagogy present additional, though related, difficulties for women. A male, assuming the position of the student-centered teacher, deliberately relinquishes authority and earns student respect for this move, but when a women assumes the same position, she is giving nothing up, only doing what is expected to her: to be silent. (TB)