The stay-at-home mom feels guilt about “wasting” her education, about becoming uninteresting, or about not contributing to her family’s income. The work-outside-the-home mom feels guilt over not spending more time with her kids, and over sometimes giving her job precedence over her family.
And that’s just the self-imposed shame: Plenty of SAHMs and WOHMs go after each other.
Visit any mommy bulletin board, and it won’t be long before you see the claws come out.
The SAHMs and WOHMs go at it pretty frequently on one particularly vicious site, Urban Baby — which, naturally, has a high concentration of New Yorkers. SAHMs argue that WOHMs care more about money than about their children, while WOHMs call SAHMs lazy — and gleefully warn them that their husbands will someday skip out, leaving them penniless.
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