Confirmed

Once again, the research shows that women feel better about themselves if they work outside the home.  'Mumsnet', a UK website for parents, has found that mothers who go to work are actually happier than those who stay at home.  Only 13 percent claimed they'd prefer to stay home.  No kidding. 

I did not get a good university education and start a pretty good career to up and chuck it all when I had kids.  Absolutely no way.  My parents worked hard and instilled values in me so I would get a good education.  Would I disappoint them?  Never.  I worked hard to get where I got, took up a valuable and expensive seat in a post-secondary institution and enjoyed a great career before the "baby bug" bit.  Was I going to sit around the house?  Are you kidding!?   

What have I always told you?  Self esteem is higher for women who get out there and get on with it.  Narrowing one's world to that of a toddler is not a good plan -- especially for well-educated women who have enjoyed careers before motherhood.  Bryony Gordon, writing in The London Telegraph, puts it perfectly.  "How am I finding it? (i.e., being back at work after a baby)  How am I finding it?  I'm finding it just hunky-dory, thank you very much.  I'm finding it totally and utterly fabulous, now that you ask," she writes.  "What's not to love?"

"Does this make me a heartless harridan (one of my all-time favourite words), a woman devoid of maternal instinct who doesn't deserve to be a mother?  No.  It just makes me normal, actually," she continues.  Personally, I could not wait to get back my job after six months' maternity leave.  And the varying child-care options I had to make -- be it a neighbour, nannies, my mother, daycare, or after-four -- were all very beneficial for my children.  They learned to adapt and were well-socialized from each experience.  Any of the problems which cropped up later would have cropped up regardless.  In other words, had I sat around the house with them, they would have turned out exactly as they have and I would have been much the worse for having sat on my educated, unemployed ass.

As this article points out, I found periods away from my children gave me the energy and drive to focus on them when I was with them. 

I remember trying to be polite when I would meet a highly-educated mother at a dinner or cocktail party who would tell me she was a stay-at-home-mum.  I would say, "Oh, how nice."  I would think, "What a loser. You got a degree in whatever and are sitting on your ass asking your husband for $5 for nylons?!  She would say, "I plan on going back when they are in school."  I would nod, but think, "Dream on, you'll never get back in.  The working world has moved on.  You're done." 

So, let's all banish the cliché of the "guilty working mum" once and for all.  It's a crock and I never felt a pang.