For some parents, staying at home with their children is the biggest mistake of their life. I am not one of those people.
While browsing a chain bookstore with my daughter the other day, I picked up a copy of The Feminine Mistake [Voice, March 28, 2007, ISBN 1401303064] and started flipping through it. Author Leslie Bennetts claims that by choosing to stay at home with her family instead of continuing to work after having children, many women are putting their financial stability, relationships with their husbands and even the sharpness of their minds and wittiness of their conversational skills at risk unnecessarily.
I put the book down and went back to helping my daughter fit wooden blocks into a puzzle. I fell into a tailspin, spiraling down and down into a hole of self-criticism and despair. Bennetts is right in some ways; being a stay-at-home mom does make you dependent financially on your husband or partner. But should I really feel apologetic for the choices I have made?
The choice between career and kids is one that must be made by each woman by herself, and for her own reasons. Later on that night I realised that if I were the type of person who highly valued money, power and prestige, the choice to stay at home might have been the wrong one for me to make. However, I am not that person. For some women the choice I have made may have been a big mistake, but I'm not afraid to stand up and say it: I'm a stay at home mom and proud of it.
