Respect is a two way street. I admire stay at home parents, I think they made some wonderful financial decisions so that one parent could stay home and raise their children. Those SAHP's who feel they've been ridiculed should be happy in the knowledge that they had the financial ability to make the choice. Perhaps those who were disrespectful to them simply didn't understand the commitment required?

As for me, I have no kids and when I was a young woman I was tired of being told what I couldn't do, "girls can't be astronauts/firefighters/construction workers...". So, instead of listening to the naysayers I went out and became a professional firefighter in 1983, at that time there were less than 100 of us in the world. I was treated like absolute ****, was put in hazardous situations just to see if I would "man up". I never filed a complaint, I never got nasty, I just worked very very hard at the job until I earned the grudging respect of the people on my department. I'm not a strong orator so I decided to be the kind of feminist who used action rather than words to try and make a difference.