Childcare is work. Teaching children is work. Cooking is work. Cleaning is work. Driving people around is work. Managing schedules is work. Taking care of babies is work. Managing a household is work.
But somehow, and for some reason if we combine all of these things into just one woman, if we combine all of these jobs to one woman, to just one house, with children who live there and call her Mom, then people suddenly start asking, “What does she even do all day?”
You’d never ask this of any of those professions. It is only mothers at home that have this extra burden of proof, that somehow we need to justify extra hard that we indeed are productive members of society, that we indeed work hard, that we indeed do things all day long.
The only difference in all of this is that women at home do this work for the people they love, instead of for people who pay her, and that should make the work more valuable, not less.