GainesvilleMoms.com

Everyone's situation and long term goals for their family are different. However, you are so right! When one actually crunches the numbers to see what it costs to work it is staggering and not unusual to discover that what one spouse (in some cases both) is making just covers childcare and the additional costs of working (dry cleaning, services you hire someone for vs. doing on own, eating out, prepared meals, commuting, clothes, lunches). Another interesting calculation though would be, what is the long term loss in earnings w/ one spouse being out of the workforce (lost 401K opportunity, lost promotion opportunities). I think everyone does what feels right for them and only they are able to know what that is. I appreciate all of the options there are for parents (men and woman) and the erosion of the stigmas. My husband and I have had periods where we both worked, just he worked when I took time off to make a career change to a more family friendly job, he later took some time off to get an MBA and I worked and he cared for the kids. Today we both work. It has been nice having this flexibility.

Aaaww, you guys, you're going to make me cry...thank you for your kind and loving words. It was an honor to meet all of you, too. I am looking forward to sharing many, many great (and sometimes, not so great) mommy moments with all of you, too, in the future. Cheers to all of us!

I enjoyed meeting everyone as well. It was nice to see that a group of women all in different stages and places in life still can have so much in common ... and have a great time!

FLNonny, I believe you are right, that more moms or dads could stay home and the financial burden might not be as they expect. One of the things that is so great about the time we live in is that we have that choice -- to stay home, to work part-time, to work full-time, to work from home. It's nice knowing that every family can make the decision based on what works best for them. For my husband and me, we are younger parents. We both graduated college less than a year before we had our older son. I think we both wanted to put to use what we had learned. So it works for us.