To work or not to work?

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To work or not to work?

Why the educated homemaker is opting out of the workplace and why other women are not

It’s 5 a.m. and Laura Williams squints at her computer’s bright light. She presses the letters on her keyboard and replies to as many emails as she can before another busy day at her full-time job begins.

After she makes breakfast for her family, her husband Ryan gets their daughters, Emma, 4, and Anna, 18 months, ready. Then the Williams family sets out to drop Emma at pre-school, and then mom and Anna drop dad at work.

Sounds like your typical family morning: the family gets ready, the kids go off to school, and mom and dad go off to work, right? Well, sort-of.

Seven years ago, 29-year-old Laura Williams was living the professional life she always imagined. Armed with a degree in social work from Cornell, Williams had an impressive resume that could practically name her job of choice. But today, she’s living the life she never imagined she would have: she’s a stay-at-home mom.

Williams is a part of a growing national trend where educated women earning good salaries temporarily ‘opt out’ of the workplace to take care of their children.

With professional experience ranging from public relations at XEROX to handling media affairs for 1997 U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky at Boston University, Williams had employers from Rochester, N.Y. and Cambridge, Mass. offering her higher paying and higher power jobs.

But the newly married, successful professional was also thinking about starting a family. So Williams turned down these career advancing offers and continued at the Boston University Public Relations Office.

“I knew early on that I did not want an 80-hour per week job,” said Williams. “Getting a graduate degree, working part-time, and starting a family are three things that did not mesh.”

Williams, 36, who described herself as a go-getter, said she always felt ambitious while growing up.

“I knew I wanted to work professionally,” she said. “I always thought I would work part-time and have children.”

But after working at BU through her first pregnancy and simultaneously taking graduate classes at the university, Williams became anxious; yet she wasn’t ready to walk away.

“This was definitely the most stressful time in my life,” said Williams, whose own mom was a stay-at-home mom. “At the time you think you can do it all, but finally I approached my boss and convinced him to let me work from home.

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