I watched a report on last night’s 60 minutes on stay at home moms. This wasn’t on what I would consider the average stay at home mom; this was the quit a high paying career kind of stay at home mom. I know plenty of stay at home moms who did quit good careers for the benefit of their families, but not quite as high-powered as the ones they interviewed.

The other side was presented by a woman who struck me as bitterly resenting that any intelligent woman would choose her family over her career. She compared, using a quote from Mark Twain, women who couldn’t make a difference in the world and women who chose not to make the difference she wants them to make. She worries that we’re going back to the ’50s, when a woman was supposed to stay at home with her family.

Not the same at all, just ask any at home mother! I really wish people like that could understand that a stay at home mom is not wasting either her education or her potential. She is making a sacrifice that I believe will benefit society. We’ve been dealing with problem children, children who don’t have parents taking good care of them and aren’t there when they need them. Can’t that make just as important a difference as heading a Fortune 500 company, being a senator and so forth?

A stay at home mom is not some kind of failure for being a dependent on her husband’s income. Just do some research and find out how much more work it is to be a stay at home parent. I have seen it quoted that being a stay at home parent is equivalent to having two full time jobs. That’s scarcely lazy.

Now, I don’t care which parent stays at home, but I do think when finances permit, it is best for the children in most cases if one parent does. My husband would love to stay home with our daughter, but when she was born he had a job outside the home, while I had learned medical transcription and could work at home. That’s how our decision was made.

One of my sisters is getting married soon, and if they have children, her husband will be staying home with the kids. Should he be ashamed for being dependent on her when that time comes, or should he be proud to be doing the best he can for his family?

I’m proud of him already. It’s a harder choice in many ways for a man to make.

Perhaps we stay at home mothers aren’t speaking out in the way some would wish. But we do make our voices heard in our own way, and those who think feminism means only following one path, that being a career, may not be ready to hear us. But I know of no stay at home mother who stays home because she believes it is her only choice. She stays home because she can make that choice. The financial sacrifice is tremendous, and being looked down on by women who have chosen a different path isn’t easy.