Moms and Moms

According to Danielle Bean. Excerpts:

...The media's notion of the "Mommy Wars," where briefcase-wielding career women face off against stroller-pushing homemakers, is largely a fabricated stereotype. Some mothers work because they want to. Some mothers work because they have to. Especially in tough economic times, though, intact families will find all kinds of creative and cooperative ways to get the bills paid without sacrificing their children's needs for hands-on parenting.

Are we working moms? Are we at-home moms? Or are we an unlabeled something in between?

I suppose that I am a working mom. Those words look odd to me on the page and feel foreign on my tongue, but they are true. I never in my lifetime planned to be a "working mom," and yet here I am . . . with a husband, eight kids, and a job that provides income my family depends upon.

I happen to be one of the lucky ones. I have a supportive husband, I enjoy what I do, and I am able to work almost exclusively from home. But still my work costs me something. It costs my family something, too...