Mother of dilemmas

Article from: Sunday Herald Sun
Bryan Patterson
April 15, 2007 12:00am

To stay at home or work full-time it's a modern domestic problem.Motherhood full time is wonderful, but also exhausting.
Jenny, a full-time mother with a science degree, is often playing in the park with her two children. Allison, also a mother of two, is usually heading off to work with a PR company.
They admit that they envy each other's lives.
"Motherhood full time is wonderful, but also exhausting," Jenny says.
"The kids can drive you nuts. And, to be honest, I'd love to be able to afford the clothes Allison wears."
Allison says: "To hell with the clothes. I know Jenny works hard at home, but I'd love to be able to spend more time with my kids and somehow assuage my guilt feelings every time I leave for the office.
"I'd love to quit my lousy job and learn how to take better care of my sons."
Jenny says she sometimes feels other women -- especially the ones that work -- see her as a dim-witted second-class citizen. Allison says she often feels like a "workhorse with several bosses -- the ones at work and the ones at home".
Jenny has been out of the workforce for eight years. She is frightened by a statistic she read recently -- that women lose 37 per cent of their earning power when they spend three or more years out of the workplace.
Allison worries that she is missing out on seeing some of the important moments in her children's growth.
"I think I may have been sold a pup by second-wave feminism that says I can only be fulfilled with a paid job," she says.
Both women say they are aware that women can not "have it all". They can choose to excel at either motherhood or a career.
Australian mothers are now looking for different ways to balance their desires for both motherhoood and paid work....

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