<p>@ Billy Pilgrim: great post, lol!</p>
<p>Frazzled: Also understood what you meant.</p>
<p>“If mamma aint happy aint nobody happy.” My mom was a SAHM and utterly miserable. She hated us and hated her life. She went to work, and poof! She became a human being. Still didn’t like being a mom very much, but she was around less and happier.</p>
<p>Privileged life for staying home? More power to you. You’re not talking about jet-setting around the world six times the same year. You worked hard to have the choice you have, and it sounds like it really works for you and your family. Kudos.</p>
<p>Chaos theory talks about systems too complex to codify for linear cause/effect relationships. I think what we are talking about here is such a system. </p>
<p>As many posters point out, there are many definitions of success. But even if we narrow our sights and cede the point of a certain group of “elite” colleges, there are still too many factors to take into account. One child thrives on a parental hands on approach, another being left to figure things about himself. One loves boarding school. Anther is home schooled. </p>
<p>I agree with the poster, pizzagirl?, who said if the kid is bright (I would add and motivated) the kid will end up at a good school.</p>
<p>Here on LI the competition is so fierce there is often no way to understand which kids gets accepted, wait listed and rejected at certain schools. But if sights are set on a good education, almost all can creep in there somehow.</p>
<p>Both my kids ended up at their number one picks. Some of that had to do with my involvement because I scoured the websites of the schools to find those schools I thought my kids could do well at, both in admissions and subsequently. But it left me plenty of time for work.</p>
<p>I, too, hope the mommy wars are over. The posts that made me really happy here are the many in which the mom says, “I did this and it worked, and I’m so happy about that.”</p>
<p>That includes Sue, who had few choices and stepped up to the plate to see her son get a grand education at a price they could afford, and the poster with an Ivy education who stays home and shops at Harvard and needs to tweak the college fund.</p>
<p>I love to kids succeed, but just as much, I love to hear of women being happy with their choices. It isn’t easy to achieve.</p>
<p>Mythmom, that is totally true: I have friends who have made choices that are similar to mine, and friends who have made different choices. The ones who feel more resentful and ambivalent (and who of us does not feel resentful and ambivalent some of the time, no matter which way we went?) are those who went against their own desire, whichever way that was. It has taken me some time to come to a sense of balance with my own choices–the “I coulda been a contender” feeling I have when I think of the alternatives I passed up–but I do appreciate that I had those choices, for one thing, and that I was the captain of my soul. It is not pleasant to hear anyone bemoaning the sacrifices they made for their loved ones, especially in the context of, “and what did I get for it?” Generally speaking, their loved ones would have preferred that sacrifice to have remained unmade. But hearing others denigrate your choices, in part to bolster their own sense of superiority–whatever their own choices might have been, I have heard it both ways–is also unpleasant, and counterproductive for all concerned. It is absolutely true that kids are generally happier, and more successful, when they have positive role models, and it doesn’t particularly matter what the models are of, as long as the message is that “I have made a life that I find fulfilling and successful, and you can do it, too.”</p>