re: #181 RogueOne

The flip side of “women who have a career are happier” is that women who are stay at home moms are considered second-class citizens. I remember prominent feminists (like Gloria Steinem) ripping stay-at-home moms as being lower than prostitutes.

Yes. And that still happens now.

I have a friend, really well-educated, advanced degrees, who chose to take a few years off to stay home with the kids.
Someone else we know, who chose to keep working in the same field when she had kids, and who has been really successful in a very high-powered field and also raised good kids, was a total bitch to her.
Very, very nasty comments. Like, “Do you think you’re sending your girls a good message, being home and doing nothing?”
Like raising kids is ‘nothing’, and being home with them is ‘nothing’.

It was clearly all about this person, let us call her ‘B’, feeling guilty that she wasn’t at home with her kids. But it also made my friend feel like dirt.
Kids and work are a difficult balance, and in some ways some kinds of feminism have cheated women, because women feel like they have to do all these things and always feel guilty that they’re never doing enough, no matter what path they choose.
And that impossible balance also means that women amp up the competition: attacking others’ choices because we might feel like they somehow invalidate our own.
Just my perspective on it.