I don't think anyone is criticizing her choice to stay at home, or want to know how to run a household. But when she says "I think all the choice we have out there confuses us," that says to me that women should have no choice...and what are we being confused about?

I work at a hospital in Pediatrics, so lots of times we get magazines like Parenting and stuff like that sent to the office. When I'm bored on my lunch break, I sometimes sit and read them. The magazine did a survey of its readers if they thought that women should go back to work after having a baby or not. This one woman thought that it was "selfish" and "bad parenting" to bring a child into this world if you couldn't stay at home with it and be there for it 24/7. Umm excuse me, in that case, at least half of the women in this country are bad, selfish mothers.

What I was trying to say is that choices confuse us because whatever we choose, we are going to be criticized for doing so. Sure, I'll make more money if I go out to work, never marry or have kids (women without families make more money than women who do because there is less outside stress, making them more productive and are more likely to be promoted quicker than women with family), but my traditional relatives will always be on my back, asking me when I'm going to find a husband and when I'm going to have kids. If I choose to stay home, I might be criticized by my modern friends who are asking me why I'm not contributing to the family income. In a modern society, a stay-at-home mother isn't thought of as highly as someone who works. My mom quit her job when I was 12, and some of her friends started believing that she wasn't as up-to-date as they were about the industry she was in (technology) because she was no longer at the office.

Fair enough. Thank you for explaining.

Personally I don't think she could have been as up to date if she wasn't in the office. Technology is a pretty fast- paced industry, and if you're not in the office constantly working with it, it's pretty easy to fall behind if you're not learning the new stuff.

Wow. I didn't know my mother-in-law even read Parenting. :p

Maybe so, but Mom's friends thought that she only knew up to what was available when she left in '91. Mom keeps up by reading industry magazines and now, online.

Okay, I totally respect how you want to live your life. That's totally cool with me. However, you're saying that having choices confuses women because we're going to be criticized for whatever we do. The thing is, that might be true for you but it's certainly not true for many women. I'm rarely, if ever, criticized for anything I do, and even if I was, it would in no way confuse me at all because I don't give a rat's ass what anyone else thinks about how I live my life. I guess what bothers me about what you said is that it implies that women are either too stupid to make up their own minds, or that they're too spineless to do what they want how they want and not be bothered by what anyone else thinks of them. That's not always true.

I'm curious about what you posted earlier about how girls used to learn more about how to run a household. Do you know what they actually learned? I'm curious about it -- it was an entire course of study? I find that fascinating because I can't imagine how it would be necessary -- I mean, it's not that hard to clean the house, or read a cookbook if you don't know how to cook. Was there a lot more to it than that?

ha I totally thought it said women against men. I would like to change my initial response of "bring it on" to "whose got the jello and a video camera?"

I tend to think that its those women that feel their lifestyle/stance is the "correct and only one" is what causes problems.

I for one tend to lean more towards traditional gender roles. I love being a feminine women in the tradtional sense (likes looking pretty, smelling nice, make-up, wears dresses, enjoys cooking for her man, marriage, SAHM, etc.) - everything that some people may think are "June Cleaver-ish" or a "southern lady".

If another woman isn't into all that - cool, but don't criticize my choices nor call them archaic because you don't agree with them (hence where the the "beef" starts I guess). Its those people that say things like "I'm horrified that you work and have kids" or on the flip side, stuff like "Women that look forward to marriage are stupid" that are short-sighted and are often at the middle of any trouble between the two groups.

At one point, you could get a bachelor of science in Home Economics/Household Arts/Domestic Science at the University of Toronto. Brescia University College, a Catholic women's college affiliated with the University of Western Ontario still offers programs like this. THere are a few family studies programs at Brescia, Information on two of them can be found here:

http://www.brescia.uwo.ca/fac/dbsc.htm for the science program

http://www.brescia.uwo.ca/fac/dba.htm for arts

It is not just foods/nutrition, but also clothing and human behaviour, housing, etc.

Less outside stress???????

What you think that just because we choose not to have the stress of children than we sit around and do nothing with our time away from work? You need to get a reality check.

See when you're single everything that gets done by TWO married people (cleaning, yardwork, errands, etc) is now left for only one person to do.

Hell, most of my non-work life is more stressful than my work life.

I think many times when women with children don't get promoted, it's not related to stress -- it's because they take time off of work, say, for several months after the baby is born. If you're not working during that time period and someone else is, that other person is more experienced if you both started working at the same time. Although I think employers should be sensitive to the needs of working mothers, I also don't think it's fair for working mothers who take time off to do things with their kids to expect that it will have no consequences at all.

Also, people without children sometimes have to pick up the slack for those who do -- if you have to take off early to go to Susie's soccer practice or pick up Billy because he's sick, it may be the people without kids who are covering for you. They don't get paid any extra for that.

No matter what you do, something is going to suck one way or another.

Yes, but you 're only cooking for one person, you don't really have to clean your apartment (though you don't want to have an apartment like the hording lady who went on Oprah either). You still have more time for your work since you don't have to worry about chauffering the kiddies to soccer or ballet.

Cooking for one person is just as much work as cooking for more than one person. If you make the same amount of food as you would for a family, you end up with too many leftovers. If you cook less, you end up having to cook every day just like people with kids probably do. I don't see the difference. You also have to clean your house all the time -- I can't believe anyone would think that single people don't have to clean their houses. I have cats, and believe me, I have to clean just as often, if not more often, than people with kids, otherwise I'd have cat litter crumbs and fur all over everything. There's just as much dust in my house as there is in the house of someone with kids. Believe me, I've been in the homes of people who don't clean, and it's not something that I find acceptable.

You also seem to be assuming that people without kids have no hobbies, interests or responsibilities outside of work. We don't all just have free time because we're not driving kids around all afternoon. Some of us are in school, or do volunteer work, or are writing novels, or are doing tons of things all at once. It's not like there's a huge void in someone's life because there are no children in it.