grew out of the Victorian era of the Industrial Revolution, when it became fashionable for middle-class and wealthy women to stay home while their husbands went off to work. Prior to this, most families, except the upper class, operated cottage industries from their homes, requiring both parents to work together to maintain the business as well as raise children. During the post-WWII years, women were encouraged to stay home in order to create job openings for the men returning from war. The Stay-At-Home Mother became the ideal for motherhood—the calm, gracious, well-groomed perfect housekeeper, always ready with milk and cookies, whose children were the epitome of good manners and obedience. Is this reality for any of you? Yeah…me neither. Yet, it seems many of us are still trying to attain that myth of domestic perfection, and when we fail, we feel guilty. Let’s face it—for a lot of us, being a SAHM is not the Utopia we are often taught to expect. Our tasks are myriad, tedious and repetitive, and the pay is often loneliness, frustration and a sense of failure.
