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Being a person whose career ambitions revolved around doing good for humans and birds while making enough money to pay my bills, I spent a lot of time at home when my children were small, earning my income at writing and speaking gigs. The only "stay-at-home" parents in my neighborhood were me and a friend who was a fire fighter--he worked 24-hour shifts every 2-3 days, and was otherwise at home. (His wife worked a more normal job.) He and I swapped off on childcare.
Even though I was home, I was very busy with my low-paying but fulfilling work and my kids. Once when my mother-in-law and I visited a friend of hers and brought some cookies, her friend asked, "Oh, Laura--did you make these?" Before I could say a word, my mother-in-law, who had not held a paying job since she had her first child in 1948, said, "Laura has way more important things to do with her life than sit around baking cookies."
That's why I chuckle reading anything about people disparaging working or stay-at-home mothers or fathers. There are way too many complexities to define anyone into such a narrow category. And for some reason, in my life the only people I ever hear even debating what other women or men should do with their lives are writing for the media. Real people are (or should be) too busy living their lives to be judging others.
