Do women really have a choice between being a sahm or having a career?

Of course there is a choice. You have just said that there is a consequense and a stereotype to that choice. Don't try and tell me there aren't stereotypes of SAHMs.

She can choose to have a career rather than a family. She can choose to have a career ,then later a family. She can choose to have a family and then later a career. I'd say there are plenty of choices.

Men never had the choice to have it all so I don't see why any woman expects to.

More important than the illusion of choice is the feminist idea of blaming men. Child bearing is up to women, only up to them. Its biology. Not men's fault. This inherent "disadvantage" as expressed by many women, even here, is biology. You can get out of it by tying the tubes, not blaming men. Never in my LIFE, have I met a man who criticized a women in work for not being pregnant, not one. The criticism comes from women.

A lot of women these days don't have a choice between staying home and having a career because the economy is in the toilet and is expected to dive deep into a recession over the next few years. Because of that, a lot of families can't survive on just one income, so unless the woman wants her kids to starve she has to go out and get a job too. I know a lot of women who want to be home with their kids but genuinely can't afford it. That said, there are lots of areas in the U.S. and Canada where women *can* afford to stay home and their families can afford to live on one income. I live in one such area here in Ontario. Women here have the choice, and there are a lot of moms who are home full-time or part-time.

i am a woman, with a career and i assure you i do not have it all. i come home from work so tired that the laundry sits in the basket for days longer than it should...i dont cook nearly as often as i should...i dont do a lot of the good old fashion traditional woman's roles that i truely do enjoy doing simply because i am so damn tired when i come home from work. i LIKE the smile on my mans face after he eats something ive cooked. i LIKE the appreciation i get when he says "wow, the house looks really clean". i get a certain sense of pride when he looks good because of laundry i have washed and ironed. but i have to have a job. if i didnt have a job, we wouldnt have a place to live. so as a result of having a job, my home life is getting messier and messier. in my experience, no, there isnt a choice. you pick a career, your home life slacks, but if you choose to stay at home, you dont always have the financial freedom you might enjoy otherwise. if **** didnt cost so damn much these days, yeah, we might still have a choice. this is no longer an issue of women wanting to have careers, this is an issue of women NEED jobs in order to help pay for stuff because one income households only work if the person working has a REALLY high paying job

The idea of "having it all" and the terminology itself is fairly off putting. It implies that doing one or the other is somehow lacking or not a full life. The reality check here is that working sucks. Wise man once said, "Work to live, don't live to work." Now I know our public school system is designed to indoctrinate everyone into being worker bees. But seriously, you don't have to buy into that. The whole "career" thing is a glamorous batch a koolaid made just for women... And they're drinking it up without hesitation. Men have been at this grind stone for many hundreds of years. Work is done because it's needed, and we know it. It's not some magical fairy land express to happiness. I'm sure women will figure that out at some point (As a whole, I mean. I know plenty of individual women already have.). If you want a family, put them first. At least one of the parents should be staying home and raising the kids. Not some stranger, and not some relative. It's unfair to put that kind of responsibility on a family member, and even they may not be raising the children as you want them to be raised. Kid kennels are not the answer here. Raising children properly is becoming a thing of the past and that's terrible. Our prisons are beyond full and our schools are being shot up by whackos. And while there are some bad seeds in the world, I can't believe it's this many. The parents are at fault for the bulk of this. And it is my business, and all of yours. My (and your) children will be growing up with these other children and I'd rather not have one of them snap and end up shooting my kids. Or robbing their house, stealing their car, ect.... The main thing here is the difference between having to work and choosing to work. Most men have to work. And they do it to take care of their family. ------------------ That's the trick I'm trying to point out. "Having it all" is a bad thing. When you divide your time up too much, everyone is going to suffer. And it can be the man or woman that stays home and raises the kids. My personal opinion is that women are better suited for it in the first few years of a child's life. But if the mother is the one making the big bucks, then the father should be staying home. When it comes to raising children, what you want to have no longer matters. What matters is doing it right for the children.

not really unless she divorces and takes her husbands house and money (and children) I have five houses, no kids, a yacht and a private jet and I kept all the diamond rings: you be the judge, babycakes. I I I V

Well, a lot of women can't actually afford to stay at home with their children, and this leads to a lot of heart-ache if they want to and find it's just not an option for them. Very few families can afford to have only one wage packet coming in these days. Women are under a lot of social and financial pressure to stay in school, go to university, get a degree and have a career. But they are also under biological and social pressure to have a family and take the best care possible of that family. The two things operate at the same time but contradict each other. We talk a lot about choice and we can argue for it all we want, but sometimes, life makes these choices for you and you just have to make the best of the situation.