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I just read The Case for Staying Home, a lengthy piece in Time magazine about women making the choice to stay home with their children. Growing up, I had the impression that only uneducated women stayed home. Something that struck me in the article was how the women who are opting out of a full-time career in droves are those with the most education and/or the most career options. Those of us who are able to opt out, because of our partner’s income or extreme belt-tightening, are still sometimes seen as traitors to feminism, which was addressed in the article as well.

Now that we’ve had more than a generation of women able to freely choose working outside the home, there should be more choices, period. Everyone likes to point to “The Mommy Wars” as an example of how stay-at-home vs. career women are polar opposites, but there should be a middle ground. The article mentions a “nonlinear approach to building a career and an insistence on restoring some kind of sanity.” The idea that you can “have it all” but not all at once could be a reality for many women if there were more creativity from employers in terms of work days, hours and telecommuting.

Not that it is easy to work even part-time while parenting. I can say without a doubt that the hours I put in at home are more challenging than even my hardest day working at the newspaper or as a freelancer. The pressure of a nightly deadline that ends with “putting the paper to bed” (as I used to tell my daughter I needed to do before I could come home) is a cakewalk compared a typical day of mothering, housekeeping and balancing a freelance career.

Yesterday, I did three loads of laundry; biked to and from my kids’ school twice; emptied, filled and emptied the dishwasher; washed extra dinner dishes by hand; packed cold lunches; cleaned out the Roomba; shopped online for things my son needs for a field trip and emailed his bio-dad about the trip; remade my bed with clean sheets and tidied the kids’ “made” beds;  walked the dog; whipped up a loaf of focaccia and three dozen sugar cookies from scratch while my husband made a frittata for dinner; supervised homework; helped my daughter bake a clay project and make a book ornament for school; fielded phone calls from back East about a sick relative; watched a movie with both children; and read bedtime stories. Oh, and I caught up on email, did some job hunting, wrote a few drafts and researched future articles and blog entries. Whether I collect a paycheck for yesterday or not, it’s work.