It indeed is a terrible blow, financial and otherwise, when a woman who has left her career to stay home with children is betrayed by her husband and left in a financial and emotional crisis. How could one argue that she would not have been better off, at least financially, to have remained in the work force?

On the other hand, why is it that the decision to stay home with children is the one identified as the fatal mistake? Doesn't this situation also support the argument that women should not marry, or should not have children? Certainly it is also unarguable that the woman in such a circumstance would have been better off not marrying the adulterer in the first place. And what about having children? Wouldn't a woman also be financially better off, after having been left by her husband, never having had children, either? At the very least, they are going to cost a lot to maintain, even if she is just paying someone else to maintain them.

The reason the book, and other similar books, ignore this argument is that arguing that women should not marry or should not have children is going way too far, would gather no serious listeners, and would offend most people. But if all one looks at are financial ramifications of the worst case scenario when a women gives up a career to stay home, then the argument that she should never have stopped working applies just as forcefully, and with no means of distinguishing, to the argument that she should not have married and should not have had children.

But the reality is that the decision of how a particular mother chooses to balance the work-motherhood equation is an intensely personal one, even a spiritual one, and no woman can make that decision for another or justly criticize the other for her choice. Whether you are the stay-at-home mother who is abandoned by her husband and left without financial means, or you are the mother who earns a high salary and sees her children for only a couple of hours a day while they are raised by someone else, there is always a sacrifice. Everyone just has to determine which ones they are willing to make. The Mistake is thinking that you can know for someone else, or that the dispositive answer can be found by simply looking to where the money lies. (And incidentally, there is a whole wealth of information about the bankruptcy crisis in this country being traceable to two-income homes who fall into financial disaster when one of the incomes fails due to divorce, death or illness, so the argument that working moms = more stable financial lives is also subject to debate).