Staying at Home

My husband sent me a link to this article at EPPC, "A Skewed View of Stay-At-Home Motherhood." I found it interesting because I think that all the of the builders at one time or another would not have been considered stay-at-home moms by the census standards. I did a couple of hours of research a week for a DC based think tank while my baby napped, so I would not be considered a stay-at-home mom.

I remember taking a class called "Introduction to Population Problems" at Princeton and the professor asked the women in the class who would consider putting their careers on hold and staying at home while their children were young to raise their hands. I was very single at the time, but was still the only one to raise her hand. After class, several classmates who were just acquaintances came up to me to justify themselves, as if by the mere fact that my hand went up I had necessarily put them on the defensive. It just made me sad. There are so many options when it comes to working and child raising that I fear putting these artificial statistics in black and white can have a negative impact on young mothers.