pregnancy are quashed by the importance of the bank balance. That's not a good deal for the baby.
   Let's face it, a baby doesn't (well, needn't) cost much to make, bear or run (as in feed or clothe). It is all the other things that parents think must go with the baby that cause the old saying - "We can't afford to have another baby just yet". Working for the money to provide your child with "everything" does not necessarily ensure they will profit (spiritually) from that. The outcome of such ideas is that there has to be trade offs - things for love, things for time, or things for personal energy spent upon your child.
   If your commitment to fulltime mothering is high enough, and not working would strain your financial situation, you could always: sell up, re-mortgage and buy cheaper; move from expensive city to cheaper rural; invent ways of making money from home; make, fix or grow more to save expenses; make him get him a second job on the weekends! There are always options for reorganising one's life - but not if the dream which was conceived many years before the child always holds priority over a newfound or long held urge to mother full time.
   Even amidst financial or social adversity, good mothering (whatever you perceive that to be) can still be exercised.

I often think back to oldentimes when very large families with say 6 - 10 children all lived happily in a 1 or 2 room bush cabin whilst one or both parents worked away from the home. Such simplicity, austerity and crowdedness did not impede the development of intelligent, creative, honest, loving, well adjusted children, many of whom went on to achieve great things for society. Even in Australia today, there are families living on what is measured to be below the poverty line, producing perfectly well-parented children. In reality, it is not the child who cares about, or is affected by a mother "needing-to-work-to-support-my-family" nonsense. It is parents' expectations of what they think they must materially provide for their child, coupled with an attachment to the priority of their own standard of living over their standard of parenting.
   In the end, beyond all the possible scenarios and circumstances life may bowl at us, we can exercise choice in how we set up our preferred mothering model. If your ideal is not to work away from the home, then along the journey towards that goal, you will be consistent in making choices in sympathy with that, gradually creating a situation where the elements of mothering and work, parenting and money, all come into harmony.

"Imagining and Making Motherhood Choices"

     Over my years of motherhood, I have experienced many models of parenting and phases of integrating home life with working life. Throughout that time my perspective on how to raise my children whilst having a creative, income-earning adult life has naturally changed.
     As a 17 year old pregnant schoolgirl, I had my first baby adopted out at birth - something I would nowadays advise any teenager in the same position not to do. So during those years I had no chance of mixing mother-hood and work, although I did manage some high school study during the pregnancy!
Motherhood next came knocking at the age of 25. After working in my theatre wardrobe job until 3 weeks before the birth day of my second baby, I returned to that job 12 weeks after his birth. In those days I got by using a combination of taking him to work with me 6 days and nights a week (he used to sleep in a basket near me since my boss was pretty flexible), a bit of paid childcare, and occasional nannies supplied by my employer when I was really busy.
     Eight months later after the birth of the first, when I unexpectedly be-came pregnant with my second boy, I kept up the same working-mother routine until about 5 months pregnant then returned again to that same job 12 months after his birth. For the next 4