In the age of post-feminism, the working mother has occupied the center of attention. She is living proof, people say, of the fact that women can have it all--a career, a family, outside interests.

So when newscaster Jane Pauley, the anchor of NBC News' "Today Show", takes the podium in Tercentenary Theater this afternoon to give the Class Day speech, she will be speaking as a representative--if not the archetype--of the new working mother.

She is the third woman ever to speak at Class Day, but Pauley will be the first celebrity working mother ever to address a Harvard graduating class. And Pauley, whose high-profile job and marriage have resulted in publicity such as an article titled, "Jane Pauley's Charmed Life," says she will concentrate her speech on the problems facing the working parent.

For more than a decade, Pauley has been co-anchor of the "Today Show," balancing world travel, 4:30 a.m. wakeups each day and a private life that includes a husband and three children.

In fact, her story sounds almost too much like a magazine-created superwoman profile. Pauley downplays the celebrity status with which she has been associated, saying that her personal life is her own and that, at NBC, she is merely doing her job--no matter how novel her situation may be.

But, as media experts say, the status of a television news anchor today is such that Pauley cannot avoid being made into a symbol, whether or not she seeks it.

"Unavoidably I was going to be a symbol of working parenthood. You cannot minimize [being pregnant with twins on television]. I became a symbol in spite of myself," Pauley says, recounting the furor that surrounded her decision in 1983 to appear on television visibly pregnant.

Married to "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau--who was actually the Harvard Class Day speaker six years ago--Pauley first became pregnant in 1983 with twins and sparked a heated controversy about the professionalism of her actions by appearing on television.

Some alleged that her broadcasting while so obviously pregnant was unprofessional; some even suggested that a pregnant woman should not be working, let alone working in a high-pressure news job.

Others, though, have heralded her as a new role model.

"She has performed a difficult role on the Today program with style and professionalism...I think, as a role model. Whoever did the selecting [for Class Day] did a good job," says Marvin Kalb, director of the Barone Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a former NBC News correspondent.

Pauley says that, in broadcasting pregnant, she was not so much making a political statement as much as she was just doing her job.

"I felt obligated to work. It would not have been politically appropriate for me to be begging off assignments. But I never exploited my pregnancies. I never did segments on raising twins," Pauley says.

Pauley is almost aggressively humble about her role in the media. She is conscious that she is a female in a male-dominated field, but is reluctant to call her work ground-breaking. She says that women like Barbara Walters and Marlene Sanders were the first prominent female journalists--that she is only following where they first went.

"I was part of the second wave of women...I can't say I was a pioneer," Pauley says.