Addendum

To the woman who pointed out that I'm "looking at this from an upper-middle class viewpoint": You're right. And I should have pointed that out in my article. If one spouse makes 30 or 40K a year, then it would not be a financial trap for the other spouse to get a job.

Of course this only applies if the parents in question do not have young children , or if they have free child care for their young children. Otherwise, half the second income will be eaten up by having to pay someone else to care for your child while you're at work.

This distinction is critical and goes unexamined in our society . Returning to work once children are in school can certainly be advantageous financially. But the working mother debate is not about this scenario. It is, in fact, about "upper middle class" women who choose to work despite having young children at home. This has always been the demographic I've targeted.

This particular article here wasn't meant to tell women what they should do. Rather, it was meant to point out that if a mother wants to stay home it's often more possible than they think. Upper-middle class women do have options, but they claim they don't. Instead, they compare themselves with women who make 30K a year to supplement their husband's 30K a year salary -- as if both mothers work for the same reason. This is disingenuous at best. In fact the folks who "scrape by" making 50K a year combined salary should be irritated by the working mother debate -- because it really has nothing to do with them.

Maybe that's why the parents I know who both work to make a 50-60K salary are not bothered by my arguments. Many of them would like to stay home if they could. But the working mother debate bundles these two groups -- those who must work with those who choose to -- and cry foul. Yet the two have nothing to do with one another.

The topic of working mothers is much more complex than people realize -- and much too complicated to analyze in one article. For more information about the subject, please visit www.suzannevenker.com .