Since this is Division Day in the weeklong blog conference of work and family, one of the biggest and most publicized divisions has been the tension between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who work at home.
For the first time, I picked up Working Mother magazine last week, and I have to say it enraged me. There's the title "Working Mother." Does that imply that other mothers don't work? It also ridiculed Gwyneth Paltrow for planning to spend more time with her kid and less time making movies. What's wrong with that?
I've also heard a couple of SAHMs (stay at home moms) say that ther were reluctant to vote for full day kindergarten in their towns, because that would only provide free childcare for the office mothers. The SAHMs felt that they had made sacrifices, others should as well.
Clearly this in-fighting is not good for bringing about any large scale political and social changes. Beyond these couple of observations, I'm not sure how large of a problem this is. Have you witnessed this tension? Is it really a large problem? Why are mothers turning on each other, rather than working together?