i had a friend once who used to tell me i was going to ‘end up working at mcdonalds when i was 60′ if i didn’t start putting money away instead of ‘blowing it’. and what i blew it on? a NEW HOUSE which is oh, an investment, and i think a few things for the house – not even many because we were fairly house poor, a washer and dryer since they didn’t convey. but because we were not putting every spare dime away from retirement i was made out to be, basically, a dumbass.

as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone/isn’t illegal, i’m still not sure what other people are doing sticking their noses so far into others businesses. it’s a wee bit scary.

I try to cut my family some slack, because I know it’s been 20 years since my parents had young children in the house, and double that for my grandparents. I know I do a pretty decent job, but it’s still hard to brush aside all the criticism when it’s coming from people you happen to care about.

As for the work vs stay at home, I think it’s sad how it’s always the mom who is bad for going back to work. We applaud the fathers for supporting their family, and if they’re a stay at home father, then they’re almost god like for “sacrificing” their career. But us? Leaving a job we enjoyed is expected.

I saw an interesting article awhile back about the cost of the mother going back to work. The upshoot was that if you have a couple making $60k a year, you take daycare costs out of that, not the woman’s $15k salary alone. People tend to put a negative value on stay at home moms. Since you don’t actually get salary, you should feel guilty for occasionally doing something nice for yourself, like getting new shoes when your old ones bite the dust.

I also think that stay at home vs working isn’t always about the money. Some women just aren’t cut out to be stay at home moms. It makes me miserable, because when I look back at the last year, I can’t really point to any accomplishments the way I used to. Wrong or right, that’s something that is important to me and I just can’t dismiss it. I’m not one of those internet supermamas, who some how manage to get all their projects done, keep a overachiever baby, and the house sparkling clean and blog about it. My projects always lose out because I’m too tired after keeping with Paul, and keeping the house sorta clean to do anything else.

We’re on the opposite side of needing to go back to work, so if I mention I want to go back to school, which would involve Paul being in daycare for less than 10 hours a week, my family reacts as if I have just said – “Oh, got a new job, gonna be working 100 hours a week, and screw daycare, Paul can play in the beltway until Clayton gets off work”. Ever since I made the mistake of mentioning what I thought was a good thing, I’ve been subjected to constant guilt trips.

I am just very tired of this war against mothers who don’t fit the breastfeeding stay at home domestic goddess profile. We’re not bad women, just human like everyone else.