The Mom Dilemma SUCKS. We should not have to choose between nurturing our children and having a decent career. I am very glad I came down on the side of nurturing my kids. I am still bitter that it cost me so dearly to do so, and that it ended up placing a financial burden on my kids, too. It got even worse for me, in that newspapers' business model imploded just as I was starting to get somewhere in my career, and my attempts to switch industries around age 50 didn't work out. I would be perfectly capable of performing well at a full-time job right now, at age 58, but there's a reason I'm doing freelance work instead. In my life, I've had the double whammy of mommy penalty and then 20 years later the ageist penalty. I'm working myself to the edge of burnout to fight it.