There is a belief so deeply embedded in our society that we rarely stop to question it. It has quietly shaped women’s choices for generations, influencing careers, marriages, and motherhood decisions without ever being openly articulated.
The belief is simple: Working mothers neglect their children, while stay-at-home mothers naturally offer more time, attention, and emotional security.
It is repeated casually, almost gently. Sometimes as advice. Sometimes as concern. Sometimes as a warning. And like many women, I absorbed it without realizing I had. Until life dismantled it for me in a way I did not expect.
Before I explain how, some context is necessary. By the time I went on my second maternity leave in 2020, I had already been working for several years. Over that period, I had held five different jobs across two countries. I continued working after marriage and even after becoming a mother, returning to work after just three months of maternity leave with my first child.
When we lived in Pakistan, my daughter spent her days with her daadi or naani, depending on who was available. Both homes were close to my office, and Alhamdulillah, she adapted effortlessly. Later, when we moved abroad, she began childcare at almost three years old. Again, there were no tears, no dramatic goodbyes, no emotional scenes. She was used to it.
I had returned to work when she was only two and a half months old, so grandparents and childcare were simply part of her normal world. So normal, in fact, that during her pretend play, when she lined up dolls to play “mummy-daddy,” the mother always dropped the children at daycare before going to work. It never occurred to her that a mother could stay at home.
At the time, I found this amusing. Later, it unsettled me. I had never taken a long break from work. So when my second child was born, I decided to take a one-year maternity break. I told myself I was doing it to be more present, to give my daughter the time society kept insisting she was missing. I genuinely believed that being home full-time would automatically make me a better mother. Anyone who has taken maternity leave knows the truth, of course. It is not a pause. It is not rest. There is a newborn. There are broken nights. There are endless chores. And there is a mental load that never switches off. Still, I assumed that physical presence would naturally translate into emotional closeness. I was wrong.
One afternoon, while I was standing at the sink washing dishes, my daughter came up to me and said, quite casually:
“Mama, I don’t like you anymore. You never play with me. You’re always working, working, working.” I froze.
This was the sentence I had feared for years. The moment society had warned me about. The proof I was told would eventually arrive. Except it arrived when I was home with her all day, every day. Not when I was working. That irony stayed with me long after the dishes were done.
When I looked honestly at my days, I understood what she meant. Since starting my break, I had a newborn to care for and had quietly taken on every household responsibility myself. When I was working, my husband shared the load and we had domestic help. But once I was “home,” I felt I no longer deserved support. I tried to do everything. I was physically present, but emotionally absent. Mentally preoccupied. Always multitasking. My daughter did not need my constant presence. She needed my attention. And paradoxically, she had received more of it when I was working.
Society romanticizes stay-at-home motherhood as if it is a day-long exercise in bonding. In reality, many stay-at-home mothers are overwhelmed by unpaid, invisible labor: cooking, cleaning, laundry, errands, hosting, newborn care, and an endless mental checklist. Connection requires energy. And exhaustion drains it. At the same time, working mothers are judged harshly. Their children are assumed to be ignored, emotionally deprived, or somehow disadvantaged. But children do not measure love in hours. They measure it in warmth. In presence. In being truly seen. One hour of focused, playful, engaged attention can matter more than ten hours spent in the same room with a distracted parent.
Many women abandon careers because they are told their children will suffer otherwise. But suffering does not come from daycare. It does not come from grandparents. It does not come from employment. It comes from emotional absence, and emotional absence exists in both working and non-working households.
A working mother may come home with intention and energy. A stay-at-home mother may be too depleted to connect. A working mother may outsource chores and preserve mental space. A stay-at-home mother may have none. What matters is not where a mother spends her day, but whether she consciously creates space for connection. Here is what no one tells new mothers: you will have to cut corners regardless. If you work, you outsource tasks to protect time with your children. If you stay home, you deliberately ignore tasks to do the same. Connection requires compromise. Presence requires planning. Attention requires effort.
Motherhood has never been about perfection. It has always been about intention. Motherhood is not a competition between working and stay-at-home women. It is a balancing act, messy and imperfect on both sides. But the belief that working mothers naturally neglect their children needs to be questioned.
Because the only time my daughter felt emotionally unseen was when I was home all day, stretched thin and overwhelmed. And the years she felt secure, happy, and connected were the years I worked, but returned to her with energy and presence.
Perhaps that is the lesson we keep missing. Children do not need a mother who is always home. They need a mother who is emotionally available, wherever she is. And maybe it is time we stopped measuring motherhood by location, and started measuring it by connection.
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