Stay at Home Mom vs. Working Mom

Why is this such a debate? 

I don't get it.  

Maybe because I've been on both sides of the fence?

I know the grass is green on both sides with an occasional bare, dry, dead spot where the dog peed or where the lawn mower was set a little too low. 

I got in a bit of an argument with an acquaintance today.  Her first line of attack was that I should get a job.  I've been told this a few times when people get irritated or upset with me.  

I mean really?!

Do "you" honestly think its all computer time, soap operas, bonbons and bubble bathes?  

Do you think the only possible way I can afford to stay home is if we have government assistance so therefore I must be mooching off society?  

I can assure you that my husband is very hard working and makes enough money to support our family without government assistance.  We have some pretty darn good health insurance too.  

(I'm sure I'll get accused of bragging for the last two sentences)  

We make sacrifices in other areas so I can be a stay at home mom. I save us money by canning vegetables,  raising animals to feed our family, and cloth diapering, among other things.  

Of course even if doing that didn't save us money I'd do it for the health benefits.  

Would I be able to do all of this and work a full time job?  

Absolutely not. 

I am not so high on a horse that I don't remember what its like to have to work and how exhausted I was when I got home from work.  Baking bread by hand or canning vegetables til 2 in the morning would not be an option.  I don't work at a conventional job like you but that doesn't mean I don't work.  I have a farm here.  Which apparently you noticed because you hate how much I "brag" ( because farm work is such a blast) about it.  Do you think those animals outside make their own hay for the winter?  Or get their own bales out of the barn? Or come get themselves a bucket of water when they're thirsty? Or put their own feed in their feeders to eat? I can assure you they don't.  I do all of that.  Is that not work?  

Do I think I'm better than you because I get to stay home...or because I do different things than you do to take care of my family?  

NO!

  I haven't always been a stay at home mom.  I've worked 3 jobs at once in the past just to pay my bills and provide for my son.  It was hard.  I have a lot of respect for moms that have to work outside

the home and take care of a family.  

But please don't disrespect me unless you have spent a morning thawing pipes in a dirt floor basement. 

Or until you have spent a week at home alone with no one to talk to but your 3 kids under 5 and no one to call because all of your friends are working.  

Or until you have spent 3 hours chasing 5 pigs in circles around your house 

because no one is available to help. 

Or until you have to spend an entire weekend on a tractor (that you don't know how to drive) because people who said they would help had something come up. 

Or until you spend a few days in the hospital with your 15 month old hooked to IVs from an illness 

he got at the daycare he went to for 2 days. 

Or until you go to bed alone for 290 nights a year worrying if your husband will still be alive in the morning...

not because he isn't an excellent driver but because of every 

other idiot on the road who thinks a semi can stop on a dime; 

or thinks my husband can read their mind when they change lanes without using their blinker;

or some reckless kids decide it would be fun to drop a brick off an overpass into a trucker's windshield.  

 I was on the phone with my husband when he was mugged while sitting in his own truck.  

I was on the phone with him when a man was shot behind his truck in a gang fight.  

You go through all of that.  Live that life for one month (let alone for the next 30 years) and then 

tell me I need to get a "real" job.