I think women have it tough both ways. I have a friend who has no kids as yet, but she went to Uni for NINE years to get the career she has. She wants to have kids while she's still young physically, but she really can't SAH and have the career she has worked so hard for. Luckily in her case i think her DP would SAHP, so that might be how they do it, but i know it's something she struggles with.

I know many many women who bought houses nearly a decade before starting their family, and when the biological tock began to tick they STILL had a decade or more to go on the mortgage, and having paid half of it off i can see why they weren't inclined to downsize in ORDER to have a kid, when most people need/want MORE space, and a BETTER neighbourhood, when they have kids.

Having said that i too have come across women who looked down on me (very foolish, they won't repeat the mistake let me tell you ) for my decision to raise my kids myself. One said to me i was anti-feminist, and an enemy to educated women, quite quietly in a crowded room, and i replied loudly, "EXCUSE ME if i decided to follow the deeply female activities of pregnancy and birth with the equally female act of nurturing my children. Perhaps YOU feel a 17-year-old you've never met with an NC in childcare can do better than you raising your kids, but i think my skills are just a LITTLE better than that! I still menstruate too, in an era when i could suppress it with drugs and be just like a man - is THAT anti-feminist too?" The whole room turned to look at us and she went beetroot in the long silence that followed. EVentually her DP made a joke to break the atmosphere and i leaned in and smugly said to her " i thought a feminist was a woman who could speak her HERSELF." and wandered off. Amazingly she still speaks to me, but she's never tried to pull that one again!

Bx