I was full-time wife and mom supporting my husband's demanding military career for two decades. Post divorce, I've struggled to make ends meet the entire time, in spite of having six years of college and still receiving alimony to this day, more than a decade later. This includes a stint of nearly six years of homelessness.

I also have a serious medical condition, so you can't blame it entirely on my gender. But I'm quite confident my gender is a significant factor in my intractable poverty.

My sons are incredibly loyal to me. They still live with me and tell me every single day "You're an awesome mom and I'm so glad you raised me."

I certainly don't regret raising them. But I'm extremely tired of being poor and also tired of listening to bullshit about how it's somehow not actually due to sexism.

Being told I'm being dismissive of the value of the work I lovingly devoted myself to for leaving a supportive comment about some other woman's writing is ...wow. I don't even have the words for this.

Like I said, women are damned if they do, damned if they don't. And I hope other people here see your reply as evidence of the kind of uphill battle I'm talking about.

It's quite the rarity these days for an American woman of my age who is college educated to have spent two decades as a homemaker. If I can't comment on the pitfalls involved in that without being attacked as disrespecting women, who the hell can?

Oh, I know: no one. Because the entire point is to make it impossible to escape the trap. The entire point of societal sexism is to keep women "barefoot and pregnant."

don't take this the wrong way. I believe a man would also face significant hurdles to try and get hired after not being in the field for two decades. Honestly on paper such a person has less to offer then a cheaper, younger person who is fresh out of college. I mean If you don't do something for two decades you have forgotten most of it.

To attribute your predicament to you being a women seems shortsighted to me. But this is only from the information I gained from reading your post and I don't actually know what experiences you went through.

I'm guessing you are not a parent. I have a toddler and a one month old. It is rewarding in many ways, but it is also crushingly boring, repetitive work. It's also overwhelmingly placed on women; men simply don't do as much child care by a factor of probably ten. I'm pretty sure no woman is trying to have her cake here, and every single one would choose to have help so they could do anything else on occasion.

before we had children my dream was to work part time so i could spend a lot of time with my children. when we had children, i got that opportunity, because my wife got a good paying job and i was a struggling freelancer.

and i hated it. it was boring, unfulfilling, and i didn't feel that i got enough time to work (which was where i'd seek that fulfillment)

when working, my wife often talks about how she'd like to stay home to take care of the kids, but since i work from home i know that she also feels unfulfilled if she is not at work.

we are fortunate that we live in a country where having a nanny is common and socially acceptable (means, it's not considered a rich peoples privilege), (most often it's a relative like the kids grandparents).

i eventually developed a theory that men are really privileged to live in a society where it is acceptable for them to leave this work to their partner.