Yes, exactly. I am disappointed (but not sneering nor contemptuous) when I find out that another one of my well-educated and ambitious female peers has decided to become a stay-at-home mom. Not because I don't think it's a valuable or valid role to play, but because I have absolutely zero equivalent male peers who have done the same thing.
Another well-educated women who choose to give up her career and stay at home, without a corresponding man doing the same, is just another data point that makes MY career look invalid, and sees MY career as optional.
Like, more power to her, but it does make me sad at the state of society.
Having kids between 18-25 is very, very difficult, if you want to raise them in a financially stable 2-parent home.
I worked very, very hard to build both a financially stable life and have a family "young." I had my first kid at 28, was married at 24, and am the youngest mother I know in my professional social circle.
The only women I know who had kids 18-25 had accidental pregnancies with flings or short-term nonviable relationships, the fathers bailed, and the mother spent many years living with her parents while struggling to have a much more basic career than those discussed on this board. None of them had time, money, social support, or educational resources as single mothers to "start a self funded company while working at home."
Ideally if a woman wants to have kids, she can make a plan to have them with a committed partner at sometime around or just before 30. If she also wants to be a start-up founder, frankly she should look for a non-traditional relationship where her husband takes on most of the childcare after those early baby months, and hopefully he also has a stable but flexible corporate or blue-collar job to give them a bit of financial buffer.
Another well-educated women who choose to give up her career and stay at home, without a corresponding man doing the same, is just another data point that makes MY career look invalid, and sees MY career as optional.
Like, more power to her, but it does make me sad at the state of society.