Being a mother

I've often found myself, as a stay-at-home-mother/homemaker/housewife/or other dreaful names they come up with for what I do, feeling like I need to justify or excuse the peculiar choice of Not Having a Career. Which annoys me, because who do I need to explain my choice to anyway? And yet all sorts of explanations come into my head when someone asks "So do you work?" without any implication of accusation or derision, just a straight-forward, practical question. It makes me bristle, and then I feel silly. But here we go anyway.

( A long-winded justification )

Well, that's enough violent opinionating for one day.