I am a single woman with no children.  I have several comments on this issue: 

I work in the public school system as an aid  and have worked at private daycares during the summer months and for several years worked as staff for handicapped children and adults.  I've seen a wide range of situations.  As far as the daycare work...I have worked at some wonderful daycares and at some that I quit and would not recommend for anyone.  I see moms on equal but seperate energies based on their personalities and situations in life.  We can go deeper into this based on income if you all wanted.  Based on my experience at daycares..I definately see why moms would be hesitant and encourage deep research in considering daycares.  I agree that moms should help each other instead of choosing a side.  I applaud the moms who are plugged in to their children's education and work with the teachers.. I'm studying to be a teacher and find the job much easier to care for the children if the parents and I are on the same page...I know...well DUH..lol.

 Back to the stay at home versus working issue...My mom was both.  She worked during my early years until I got sick..then she quit to stay with me in the hospital and was home after thant until I was a teen.  I was introduced to a wonderful babysitter during my early years.  I am very close to my mom now.  Being a grown woman on my own, I see her as a woman and my mother.  I see her as the woman who raised me and my brother, and as the woman who is a grandma to my niece and who she was before marrying my father.   So to me..there is no difference in level..there is only choice.

  I have to end this with typing that based on what I know..learning from the women I have met..and persuing a career that can allow me to do so..I would most likely choose to stay at home during the early years of my child's life if I am married by then and if we can afford it.   

There are always going to be some people who think their choices are the best and that other people's suck (see the article on working mothers that Friday Playdate critiques for an example). But I hope that the vast majority of moms respect other women's judgment in making their own decisions about how to handle motherhood.

I've been a full-time working mom, a mom with a part-time job, a mom with home-based work, and a stay-at-home mom. I don't think I'm all that unusual in having used different arrangements at different points during my "career" as a mother. That means that many women aren't on one side or another.

FYI, Miriam Peskowitz of Playground Revolution also blogged about the GMA show.

What bugs me is "An alarming number" or any article that starts out either screaming sound the alarms or praising (insert diety) because women are choosing to stay home.

It's all about choice. Choice is good so quit with the alarming number intros and focus on the fact that people are able to make choices - and are making choices that they think are right for them.

Staying home or going to work - neither needs an alarm to be sounded.

~Denise

On Oprah some time ago half the audience was stay at home mums and the other half working mums. Neither side could agree with the other and it was almost and out-and-out war.

Personally the thought of being a full-time stay at home mum makes me feel ill but I don't think they're any less valuable than anyone else because they stay at home with their kids.

Come on people, either/or, it doesn't matter.

Jenn:

Here's the thing I don't get about this ongoing feud. If all of the women with children were out of the workforce, who would take care of the sick patients in hospitals? Who would teach our children? Who would provide social work services to families in need? Let's face it, there are jobs in this world men just don't do: nursing, teaching, and social work are just a few that immediately come to mind. Do we want to return to a time when men ruled the country and women were not allowed to vote or attend school?

I'm not exaggerating when I say that a man I know actually said to me recently, "It's a good thing you have boys. You don't have to worry about wasting your money on a college education."

Excuse me?

I'm waiting for the day when all the moms go to work and all the dads stay home. When a woman is finally elected president. Then, and only then, will we see a bridge over this divide.

What aggravates me the most about the "Mommy Wars" is that they are almost exclusively a creation of the media. Yes, there are idiots out there who will criticize a woman's choice to stay home or to work (pick a side, people will still tell you it's the wrong one), but for the most part, I think, women are pretty much good with each other's choices, and with their own. It's the Good Morning Americas and Daily Oklahomans of the world that insist on reminding us that this is a WAR! Between the MOMMIES!

Apparently ABC is waiting for us to start beating each other senseless with our diaper bags.

I cut my post down to 500 words and sent it to my local paper, which makes me complicit in the whole rhetorical mess, but I swear to god I'm so sick of hearing about how MY choice is either ruining America or saving the world. I'm just trying to get through the day without losing or killing one of my kids. I don't have time to fight a war.

That is all.

I hate when the media does this. What is best for me and my family may not be best for yours...but who cares. I know women with a happy healthy family who work outside of the home and women who work from home or stay home with also a happy healthy family. Its just the media being ridiculous. Again.

LBB

Saving the moisturized-impaired one shea butter at a time.

Tragedy? Shouldn't we address this? Since when is it a tragedy when any heart felt, hard earned decision is made in the best interest of any family? A tragedy that I would *gasp* waste my college education on my children? Doing for us, what we feel is the very best thing we can do? Can you really put some sort of price to high on making the best choice you are capable of making? Oh, well, I didn't go all the way through school, so that's OK to quit and stay home now, or wow, no, I did graduate work, my children aren't worth wasting that on...Since when did any pro-family decision, whatever that looks like to you, become a tragedy? And what really seems to be the case, in our post-feminist movement society, is that any decision representing best our abililty as women to choose, ie: working OUTSIDE the home, and not in it, is OK. But stay home? Make a traditional choice that makes all that bra-burning for naught? No way. THAT is a tragedy for all we've earned. I thought we earned the right to do whatever we need and want to do. No critisicm from our sisters sans bras. I can't help but think that this comment, especially coming off a morning news show, says volumes about the lack of real care and respect for any family, especially more traditional, in our current "anything goes, unless I disagree with you and you may harm my cause" culture.

Why don't more dads stay at home?

The assumption that it's a woman's choice is problematic in my mind. A parent at home is fine. Why is it assumed that the choice is only for women. Nope. We haven't come a long way baby.

I've said again and again on my blog that mothers are an easy target in america [possibly because we're too busy to fight back?]. The media, especially television media, exploit the two-sided either/or dichotomy to create headlines and drama, when in real life I know few people who would sincerely bash a mother from the "opposite" camp. We all know it's hard no matter which path you choose.

[and as debi said, who's questioning the dads' decision?]

For all the blather about SAHMS and WOHMS, caring for children -- whether by mothers, fathers or paid professionals [public school teachers, anyone?] -- is a horribly undervalued and underpaid endeavor. Until the country as a whole puts top priority on caring for children, people will continue to carp on what moms are or aren't doing. We're easy scapegoats.

And I thank them for seeing the value in raising their children and not feeling like it is soley the mom's job. I have a lot of respect for SAHD's because they are definitely the minority.

LBB

Saving the moisturized-impaired one shea butter at a time.

I saw this too and agree it's ridiculous. Here's the comment I wrote on my own blog that day:

Of course the fact that different (middle-class) women make different choices means that we are at "war" with each other. And the issue of childcare is of course a "mommy" issue and not a PARENTS' issue. Yet again, daddy gets to guiltlessly walk out the door each day to earn a living with no conflict over his choices, over whether he's a good father, whether his working will irreparably harm his children, whether his baby is more bonded to his caregriver than to him -- and without the need to justify himself to the rest of the world.

The arguments are four-square. Women with children who work outside the home, versus women with children who stay at home, versus women without children (feeling an injustice if a woman-with-children takes time off to attend to her childrens' needs) versus males.

I feel blessed to be able to stay home. I have two children left at home and I am grateful to be here. But I don't think I am "better" than mothers who don't. "Different" doesn't have to mean one is better than another.

I earn a small income from work-at-home projects, but I know I would bring more money into the household if I were employed elsewhere. We've made sacrifices to make up for this income differential, (no nights out, drive older cars, etc.) I know we are lucky to have the choice, that there are many families and single mothers who couldn't stay home with their children even with sacrifices. And maybe they wouldn't want to. Neither road is easy. Stay-at-home is often boring, repetitive and difficult to handle without the emotional reinforcement of a paycheck and co-worker approval/camaraderie.

Working outside the home is equally difficult, with housekeeping and child care duties often not equally distributed among family members. There is still a pay disparity, even for the brightest and most diligent women who work outside the home, which has to be enormously frustrating - to work as hard or harder than male co-workers, yet see fewer advancement opportunities or financial rewards. And many jobs women perform are physically and emotionally challenging yet pay is minimal (such as nursing home attendant).

So let's not fight one another. We are all women. Appreciate the differences, and do what you can to smooth the path for one another.

Marti