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One of the biggest challenges facing stay-at-home mothers is isolation, which can be particularly intense for professional women. "Because they were working in high-powered, high-pressured, demanding jobs, they often weren't able to spend much time in the community and make neighborhood friends," says Pamela Stone, associate director of the Radcliffe Public Policy Center in Cambridge, Mass. A number of national organizations with local chapters have sprung up to address the loneliness that can surround mother and child, including Mothers at Home, the Moms Club, Mothers & More and Mocha Moms.
Despite the support offered by these and other groups, some women find that the craving for adult company propels them back to work sooner than they expected. Stormy Cooke planned to stay home with her daughter Shea for three years, but when Shea was two, Cooke was offered a job with Pixar animation studios in Richmond, Calif., and she jumped at the opportunity. Though she didn't need the money--her husband is a computer-security architect for a large company--Cooke says, "I knew I'd be happier in the long run doing what I like to do."
Contemporary mothers express little anxiety about their ability to segue in and out of work. "Our mothers went straight from college or high school to motherhood," Bullen says. "Today's mom is working before she chooses to stay home." Furthermore, the trend of workers jumping from company to company is helpful to mothers returning to work, because employers no longer place a premium on an unbroken job history. The booming economy helps too. Says Williams: "With 4% unemployment, workers have the bargaining power to say, 'I won't work that schedule, but I will work this one.'"
Perhaps the biggest difference between today's stay-at-home mothers and those of an earlier era lies in expectations. Says Bullen: "A woman today is definitely not planning to be home for a lifetime. She can take the time to raise her children and still return to work, where she can have another 20 or 30 years. It's not an either-or, do-or-die decision." That may be true. However, as Flux author Orenstein points out, the child-rearing years are "such a short time that you should enjoy them, but you should also recognize that you need to be thinking about what's going to happen when that short time is over."