We have to stop acting like having kids does not change people. When you wake up the morning after your child is born you are forever changed.

Sorry folks, you can’t just go back to being old lunchbox Jane or Joe and head to the office or plant like nothing has happened. And Corporate America has to stop pretending like you can.

In the work world we look at parenthood like we look at death in society at large. If we ignore it it will go away.

Remember the uproar during the health care reform debate over death panels.

Here’s Sarah Palin’s famous Facebook line from last summer:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel”

That was about a proposal to have patients and doctors sit down and actually talk about what everyone’s expectations are if a major illness hits. Would you want to be kept alive on machines, or allowed to die?

I see nothing wrong with this type of preplanning. If you talk about these things at a less emotional time they may go a bit more smoothly.

I’m proposing a similar death-panel idea for working parents and their employers.

In the last month, I’ve been interviewing dozens of working moms asking them about how motherhood has impacted their careers, and the one theme that’s emerging is the lack of motherhood pre or post planning.

Moms have kids and then suddenly, in their postpartum haze, have to figure out how to make work work. Most often they and their bosses just pretend like nothing has happened. “Yeah, she has photos of this new baby and she looks tired, but things will go just as they did before.” And dads, they’re just troopers. “They may not be sleeping as much and suddenly have to find time to take the kid to daycare, or get to baby well visits, but they’re ok too.”

This is a bunch of hogwash! They are not ok, they are now parents!

Corporate America keeps scratching its collective head over why women get off the work ramp after babies come, but the reality is their vehicles are now burdened by baby and they got to get off the road to fix a flat tire or find a vehicle that can handle the heavier weight.

Some may keep driving but their situation is precarious and their career cars can be a blow out at any moment.

That’s how it typically happens. Women decide in an emotional moment that their jobs, their careers, aren’t going to work now that babies on board. We all know women like this. “That’s it!” they proclaim and head for stay-at-home-dom.

Some of this could have been averted if there were some freaking planning folks.

Employees and employers should sit down and have a discussion in the weeks or months before a baby arrives. I know, there are some legal issues because workers aren’t required to even disclose the fact that they are pregnant. Pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is alive and well. But for most companies, baby bias is not rampant and often your manager may be a parent as well.

A few executives have told me they encourage working parents to discuss what they need before any problems arise. But most employees are worried about looking like they are less committed to a company if they start talking about their family responsibilities. And managers don’t want to bring it up because they don’t want to be hit with accusations of bias.

We need formal policies that require a boss and a worker to have a parenthood powwow.

I’m sure Sarah Palin, a proponent of empowering working women, wouldn’t have a problem with that.

Does your company encourage such discussions? Did you ask for a powwow yourself? Or, are you one of the pretenders?

Here’s an episode of the TV series “Parenthood” to use as an icebreaker: