My mother went back to work for pay once both kids were in school all day in 1970. She was part-time for quite a while, and staying home to take care of the kids was a given. The matter was given to us kids as mom not being alone in the house all day every day, and, well, the extra income can buy some extras for the family.

Not an issue that I was aware of -- on the other hand, I was about 8, and my parents were fairly big on don't-tell-the-children.

Oh! ms belle, did you still want poetry things tweeted?

I have no idea what my mother did after I, the youngest, went off to school. She was the treasurer for our church, but she didn't do any work outside the home.

My mom went to business college in the 50s and got a steady job as an office manager for the Boy Scouts that she worked at for 38 years. Even before Dad became disabled she was often the primary breadwinner of the family, and her head for bookkeeping meant she always handled the family's finances.

My mother got a graduate degree from Harvard in 1954, went to work in Japan, got married in 1960 and stopped working. As she had children, and it was tough to make ends meet she tells me she used to think, "why doesn't he (my father) get a second job." Right after that she usually declares herself an indiot and wonders who stole her brain.

My mom didn't work for pay after she had kids. Even when I was a kid, my parents always referred said "we decided that she wouldn't pursue that" rather than saying she didn't have to work or shouldn't or anything like that.

Another department decided to give us all smoothies today, so that's pretty sweet. And I think I heard there are nachos somewhere. Today is looking up.

Today is looking up.

Seems only fair, it was a rough start

My mom worked for pay before having kids and after my sister and I went to kindergarten. Dad's mom had worked for pay, too, as a teacher (as his teacher for a while--one room schoolhouse and all that), so I don't think he ever questioned that that would be a reasonable option.

In kinda cool (to me) news, I was poking around online and found the yearbook where my grandmother was listed at the "normal" school where she received her teaching degree in 1914. I wish the scanned images were better, so I could try to recognize her in the photos.

My mother worked part time through college and got a full-time job after graduating. She fought to keep that job even after getting married, but was forced to quit when she got pregnant (with me). Had my sister four years later, went to work part time when I was seven, then went to work full time when I was 14 or so. My father would periodically declare, "no wife of mine is going to work!" ... but she hated staying at home and kept working.

Elizabeth Warren and ... her daughter, I think ... wrote a book about the Two-Income Trap - about how in earlier years, when things got tight financially, a stay-at-home mother/wife could get a job to get through, but now just to stay afloat it requires two people working full time.

a book about the Two-Income Trap

I read that; it's a very different take on the two-income family than I was used to, but she made a darn good case *economically* for having one parent stay home with the kids, and how it's been bad for American economic health that that's no longer possible for most families. That is, hard economic times made it impossible, and the fact that it was impossible made the hard times worse.

My mom worked her whole life; when my sister was little mom had a salon in the garage, and when I was little mom was doing seamstress work in the basement, until she got an admin job at RCA. Later she worked at a shirt factory, then she got her accountant certification and got a job at TRW, from which she retired. It never occurred to me that I should not work. The whole idea that women couldn't or shouldn't do anything just passed me by; it was a bizarre foreign concept to me when I realized people really believed women couldn't work.