Excelle

You're right we're not Superwoman, but we are a woman.
A woman with great essence...
However, we have to make the things we wanted, we loved..
And once and for all, do the things that makes us happy...
after all, we live to work, ..:)

First of all, ALL mothers are working mothers. Paid or unpaid it doesn't matter. I loved Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. One of the examples he wrote about in the book was Regina and Louis Borgenicht. He wrote, "Imagine what it must have been like growing up in a home where meaningful work was practiced." To be able to use your talents, education and interests to produce something useful and financially rewarding is a human right that we as a society don't recognize or value.
When my children were small we lived in an economically depressed area. My husband had a remote position that sent him around the rest of the state on a weekly basis. I chose to stay home with the children. I would have liked to work part time, but there weren't many opportunities.
To this day I am not sure staying at home was the right decision. I'm a social person. Working at home is not my ideal workplace. I need adult interaction on a regular basis. I suffered from clinical depression and the family suffered from financial problems as well. Needless to say it wasn't good for our marriage either. When we finally moved, I went to work part time, then full time and then I returned to school and finished my BA.
IF women throughout our history weren't working mothers, gathering, growing, preparing, storing food, making warm coverings, not to mention trading or selling their goods there would be no human race, no economy.
Why feel guilty. What we need now is to redefine the workplace. The workplace is also an artifical construct based on what worked during the industrial revolution. It is a very male model. Work, home, school are seperate. Children and therefore their caregivers don't belong in the workplace. If the human race survives. The planet will survive. But we may not. Our next revolution will be a Green Revolution. It is time to dream about our ideal workplace. Can we form a community that integrates home, work, daycare and school in better, more environmentally responsible ways. Everyone's talents are natural resources. We can no longer afford to ignore those resources. There are many solutions to our current financial and envirnmental problems. We are going to need all of them.