| I've observed the same. My wife is happy working while simultaneously feeling like she wishes she could be home with the kids. She works with a number of women with master's degrees and they consistently opt to stop working as soon as maternity leave is up if they are able to. Our kids go to late stay programs at school because we both work, which means that if they want to do an after school activity like soccer, dance, scouts, etc that it's a "rush from late stay, change as fast as you can, go to activity." We aren't trying to overload them or anything either, just aiming for 1 after school activity a couple of days a week. I think 90% of the pressure is people trying to justify their life choices or requirements. If you are working mom and you have to be for income sake or to pay student loans, you'll see stay at home mom's with a "must be nice" attitude. If you're a working mom and you don't have to be, it's a "I'd be so bored" or "What do you do all day?" or "My job gives me purpose" because it reinforces your own life choices (whether you believe it or not). If you're a stay at home mom because your job would just be paying for day care, it's going to be a feeling that you should be doing more. If you're a stay at home mom because you choose to you should feel nothing but contentment with it because you made the choice. This is a hard lesson that a lot of people, myself included, are experiencing because we've all been sold a different bill of goods our entire lives. There's even a book on it called The Two Income Trap. The simplest way to filter out negative chatter is to identify whether somebody is trying to make themselves feel better about their own choices or not. That's 90% of the negative chatter that I observe. |