I'm a 26-year-old woman just starting my career and this is exactly what my mom has always told me. She's a lawyer who was about to make partner when she stopped working to raise my sister and me. Part of that decision was driven by the difficulty she was having being accepted as a full member of the firm while trying to raise kids at the same time and part of it was driven by the fact that she realized she barely knew me during my first year of life.

When she tried to get back into the workforce when my sister and I were teenagers, she had a very difficult time of it, despite her excellent credentials. She has since started a second career and has been working full-time (albeit making much less than she would have had she kept working as a lawyer) for the last 10 years or so.

She has always told me to never stop working, even if it's part-time, and to always make sure you can support yourself, no matter how certain you are that your partner won't leave you.

On a related note, this is one of the reasons my fiance and I are almost certainly only having one child. We think it'll only make it easier for us to both keep working full-time.

NYT Commentator The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In