It’s important to have discussions with people who have opinions different from ours. What your friend isn’t taking into account is that few families can survive on one income, and many wealthy women who are able to choose not to work, neglect their kids anyway by hiring a nanny and spending their days shopping, at the spa, at the gym, doing charity work, and socializing.

Even 50 years ago, when I was a kid, a lot of my friends’ mothers had part-time jobs or worked full-time in the family business like my mother. Back then, it was usually to pay for extras; today it’s more often to cover essentials. Housewife is not the full-time job it once was as machines have taken over the heavy housework and families are smaller. If a woman wants to stay home, can afford to, and have 10 or 12 kids, that’s her business, but going back to that model doesn’t make sense for most people.