I remember Sunday evenings as a kid… Listening as my parents moved around in the kitchen assembling a meal of some kind while we kids cozied up and watched "Wonderful World of Disney." Sunday nights were a time of relaxing family togetherness

I work as a lawyer for a big law firm, on a reduced hours basis. I love what I do, but bluntly I work with a bunch of assholes. I’m basically treated like a waste of space cause I only put out 1200 hours per year, versus the 1950 that regular associates work. So I’m looking for an in house job. I just want to feel appreciated, and I’m not sure that’s possible working part-time at a law firm.

I count my blessings every day that I can stay home full time with my baby. I never really liked the jobs that I had (jobs not careers, huge difference) and I never felt fulfilled as a person doing any of them. It makes me very upset that so few of my friends have been able to stay home with their children due to job inflexibility or the fear that they will never be able to get back into their careers if they’ve been gone for awhile. We, as a society, have to stop thinking that once a woman or man leaves the workforce for one to ten years to be a primary caregiver, that he or she is automatically unemployable. In the whole scheme of our working lives ten years isn’t very long. If we work until say we’re like 70 then is five years a long time to be MIA? No, but they (corporations, universities, schools, government) dismiss you without even giving you any credit for doing something incredibly important.

I used to make six figures at a job that I was at 16 hours a day. The stress was high, the time with my oldest was very little.
When we sat down and did the math, we put a lot of value on the time I would have with my son (now we have two), and decided we could do without a lot of stuff so I could stay home.
Once home, I got bored easily ~ it’s my nature. So I created an online business (then soon joined a similar firm rather than have the overhead) and started writing freelance here at Babble.
I wouldn’t change it for the world. It works for me. But I have friends who like to go out to work and that works for them. It’s all in how you want to juggle – because no matter the situation, we’re all juggling the same decisions in parenting and it does us no good to judge each other.
Great post Redsy!

I went back to work full-time when my first child was 4 months old and I’ll be doing the same with this one. I must be the world’s suckiest mom, but I never wanted to work from home. I just don’t multi-task all that well, and my job is computer programming, which for me at least requires the ability to concentrate intensely. I can’t imagine how I’d do that while also trying to take care of a baby. I hope my way of doing things isn’t screwing my children up (it helps that I have excellent child care on-site at my husband’s workplace) but as for me personally full-time work in a family-friendly office is just fine. I just hope that now that there will be two of them, it doesn’t feel like they’re both getting shorted time-wise with me.

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I work from home as a technical writer, and I have to say, just as Mr. Almond did in his piece, that it is not the dream some think it is. It is hard to concentrate when my daughter is babbling and laughing while my husband is playing with her in the next room. It is even harder when she walks past the door and sees me. She cries. She wants me. All I can do is wave. If I go to her I know I’ll lose at least 20 minutes if not an hour of work.

It would be nice if my husband didn’t have to also work, but he works 45 hours a week at one job and runs his own business at night. So the hours I try to work (when he doesn’t have something to do) are from 6 p.m. into the early morning hours and then on weekends.

Another complicating factor is breastfeeding. It is one thing to want to be in the next room. It is another to be needed in the next room. My daughter would not take a bottle, no matter what we tried. So, when she wanted to nurse I had to drop what I was doing, no matter what. Now she is on solid foods and old enough that she doesn’t need to nurse. She just likes it. I’m pretty sure she will be weaned in a couple of months, so that will help.

Of course, I am more than happy to be able to work from home. But it stretches me thin, and to be frank, I do most of my work after my husband and my daughter are both in bed. I usually work until 1 or 2 a.m., unless I am up against a deadline and I have to work through the whole night, like tonight. It isn’t easy, but I love what I do.

This is timely for me. I just returned to work part-time, teaching ESL in the evenings, after three years at home with my daughter.

There were a lot of factors, but one of the big ones was that my daughter had really intense separation anxiety for a long time. From the time she was just a few weeks old until about 2.5, she would literally cry the whole time I was away. It didn’t feel right to leave her. Also, the $ just didn’t add up.

Now, she is over the separation anxiety, and after three years I’m ready to be at work again. Also, while we scraped by on one income, it wasn’t easy.

Most mothers I know have worked and stayed home at various times, or worked PT. . .I think the intensity of the debate is more about our own ambivalence than anything else. I also thing that the anger is misplaced. Why aren’t we directing it at the government and corporations, who could do a lot more to support families so that the choices weren’t so impossible.

I wish I had a choice. I’m the breadwinner in my family – better job, more money, better benefits, very established career-wise – so when my baby arrives in January, I’ll be going back to work M-F 8-5 after a few weeks. There is zero flexibility in this. I’m lucky that my husband will be able to stay home during the day to care for our child, but it really isn’t an option for me. I’m glad I will still have the challenge and stimulation of my job, but I know I’ll miss the time with my child. We’ll see how it goes!

I fought stopping work. I was a geologist and loved my job. I resented staying home and was jealous of my husband. Now it is 5 years later and another daughter has joined us. I am so thankful I did stay home and love it now. It is a lot less stressful doing one job, being a mom,than two. It still falls to the mother to do the lions share of the parenting, housework, household budget, grocery shopping, etc… I am only one person and I can only do one job at a time. The time away from work has also given me the chance to review my career choices. When I do return to work in a couple of years when my youngest starts school it will be in a different field. I am lucky we could afford for me to stay home with my daughters and I will never regret it even after my initial reluctance to do so.