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Home › Articles › For and About You › To Work or Not to Work

To Work or Not to Work

The Mother's Dilemma

By Tamar Krantman Weiss

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worker conflicts with the way we define our ideals as parents." Laura, for example, insists that mothers must be firm with employers in order to keep the priorities of the family at the forefront. In her experience, if a woman is firm and confident, employers will not punish mothers for their numerous commitments outside of the job.

And keeping your job is important for your family's sake, too, says Professor Williams. If, for instance, a couple were to divorce, a homemaker and her children "would stand a significant chance of poverty. Because of the treatment of mothers in divorce court, 40 percent of mothers end up poor... displaced homemakers are much more likely than employed women to find themselves in that group."

Despite these figures, some women maintain that being a full-time homemaker is the best thing for their families and themselves. Rachel, a trained recreational therapist, was disillusioned with her place in the labor force. She felt that she was not receiving enough pay to make her job worth while. Instead of continuing, she decided to quit her job and be a full-time, stay-at-home mom. "I am very happy with the decision I made," she says. Rachel isn't nervous about being able to return to the work force later. "I haven't been working in years, and I still get calls all the time about returning to work."

family For women who feel that a compromise between going out to work and being a full-time homemaker is in order, there is always the option of being part of the labor force while staying home. Thanks to the telecommuting age, opportunities for the mom who wants on work from home have increased tremendously. Cheryl Demas is founder and editor of WAHM.com and author of The Work-at-Home Mom's Guide to Home Business: Stay at Home and Make Money with WAHM.com . When she was pregnant with her second child and her first one became ill, she decided it was time for her to leave her engineering job and stay home. Cheryl first considered Web site design, but she soon realized that there were a lot of "scams and schemes aimed at moms at home." She began writing and posting her thoughts and experiences on her own Web site, and this gave birth to her online magazine for work-at-home moms. The site


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