Can Stay-at-Home Moms Return to Work?
There’s been a lot of mommy blog chatter lately about two high-profile books that belittle the 5.6 million stay-at-home moms in America for not working. Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work compared women who stay home with children to reckless drivers who ride motorcycles without protective helmets. Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake offered a gentler critique, filled with stories of stay-at-home moms who inadvertently found themselves on the wrong end of divorce, financial bad luck or unfulfilling domestic lives. After talking to hundreds of women following publication of my anthology Mommy Wars, I started to wonder about the conventional wisdom that moms, especially college educated professional women, have trouble returning to work after staying home to care for children. How could a few years off nullify decades of educational and professional accomplishments for so many bright, hard-working, driven women? I talked with dozens of college-degreed mothers ages 30 to 55 who left professio
