Stay-Home Mothers vs. Professional Women

I recall feeling dismissive when I heard stay-home mothers say that their jobs were just as hard. Back in the days before Winston, I condescendingly decided that they said that so that they could feel better about themselves.

And how arrogant and ignorant I was! Since Winston's birth, I have come to feel that raising a child is much harder than anything else I have attempted to do. I can start companies, but I can't imagine having more than one kid. Stay-home mothers who have two or three or even more kids in my opinion are just absolute superwomen. Now on the surface it makes no sense since vast majority of the population have kids. Michael said that somehow I was a risk-taker before, but now I am totally not into taking any chances or risks or experimenting with anything regarding Winston.

I have since come to realize that stay-home mothers have a much harder job (at least in my opinion) than professional women, including professional women with kids. In business, if one does not take any risks, one will not have any reward. Risks imply that the outcome could either be success or failure. Smart professional women can take risks, and they weigh the pros and cons of taking those risks. If something fails, or even if a career path fails, one could always start anew. A stay-home mother, on the other hand, does not have a professional life and a separate personal/family life. There is no escape. Regarding raising a child who's one's flesh and blood, failure is not an option (to some extent). Therefore, risk-taking is much harder in that context. In addition, while professional women could always resort to the argument that juggling both career and family is tough and therefore she might have been negligent in some aspects, stay-at-home mothers are NOT juggling a career and family - family is ALL that she has to deal with. And if she makes a bad mistake there, she has no excuse for it - unless there arre several kids to deal with at the same time.

My lesson is that I should never dismiss an opinion until I have some personal experience with the topic itself.