I'm listening to the other moms talk as we wait to pick up our kids from preschool. They're at work all day which in this context sounds like they're making a getaway to tahiti. I'm the only working mom in the group, and i hardly want to confess that sometimes i, too, go to breakfast meetings. How can i open my mouth when i deserve to be lumped in with the slacker daddies, whose primary contribution is bringing home the money? when the topic of work comes up, in fact, i usually have a slinking tendency to say that i have to work to support our family. That's true, but i know that even if the mortgage weren't a concern, i'd want to work, at least part time, because it's interesting and stimulating and a part of my identity and because it makes me, i devoutly hope, a better mother. Lucky for me, i'm a writer with flexible hours, so i get to slip off and pick up my 4 year old daughter most days. That provides me with a kind of camouflage, so i don't have the nerve to say a word.

But how disheartening that in the years since women started fighting for their place in the job force, i still feel this need to fib a little about my reasons for working. I'm hardly alone in my fear that some of the mothers who have chosen to stop working view me with suspicion. The tension between moms who work and those who stay home is still smoldering a decade or so after the term mommy war was first coined, and even as the number of working mothers climbs. kim masters is a columnist for esquire and has written for vanity fair, time, and the washington post. Statistics seem to show that society is slowly becoming more accepting of moms who work. A national study in 1997 showed that about 50 percent of adults polled said it was better for moms to stay home, down from the 70 percent who said this in 1977.

The gradual change, says ellen galinsky, president of the families and work institute, is due to the fact that almost every extended family these days includes at least one working mother. But clearly, these statistics also indicate that many people are still uncomfortable with the whole idea of combining work and motherhood. Years ago, when i was single and knew everything about how i was going to raise a child, i never expected i'd find myself feeling so alienated from another group of moms. But perhaps the divide remains deep because the reality is so powerful: being a mother is much more demanding and rewarding than anyone can really anticipate.

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When i had a baby and fantasy time ended, i felt simultaneously that i was dying to get back to the comparative serenity of work and that i couldn't bear to be away from my child for more than an hour. But when i come face to face with moms who have chosen not to work, the guilt and anxiety i feel are reflexive. In brighter moments, i consider that they may just resent the idea that while they're warming up fish sticks, i'm enjoying an expense account lunch or even simply a meal with a grown up. Of course, some of this self doubt is a part of parenthood that will never go away.

When it comes to being the mother of a very young child, there's the fear that what you're doing is wrong when it comes to feeding, sleeping, or bathing, says galinsky. When another mom does something differently, those anxieties are stirred and there's often, perhaps as a defense, an impulse to put down anyone who makes a different choice. We've been handed a set of impossible standards to meet as mothers, and those ideals are difficult to reconcile with our concept of what a woman should be in the 21st century. Almost all women in today's society feel this pressure to be some kind of perfect mother, and they also feel some pressure to be independent and working, says sharon hays, ph.d.

We receive so many mixed messages about what we're supposed to want, what we're supposed to be, says deborah graham, mom of a 15 , 11 , and 6 year old in evanston, illinois, who was a marketing executive at a major law firm for several years before quitting to work at home as a writer and marketing consultant. When she worked outside the home, says graham, i felt like i was being judged all the time by myself, by other moms, by society as to whether i was a good enough mother. Her own guilt was over whether she was depriving her children of valuable mommy time, and that's why she eventually quit.

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But jen hartigan, a stay at home mother of two in foster city, california, admits she's equally susceptible to feeling ambivalent about her choice. I want to think that i'm doing the right thing, but i'm always questioning whether i am, she admits. She hopes that her daughter, who's 7, won't question herself when she's grown the way hartigan does. Many nonworking moms share this concern about the kind of role model they're offering their children, says anita garey, ph.d. They also worry about how their family would fare if they had to return to the workforce not an unreasonable fear, given the current economy. If anything should happen to their partner, they might really be in bad shape financially, and they're aware of that, she says. Hartigan, who holds a doctorate in biology, acknowledges, i'm very afraid to go back to work and that's appalling to me.

But after ten years at home, she says, she isn't sure that she could handle the rigors of a structured work environment.

self righteousness and resentment

with so many complicated feelings about such a high stakes issue, there's plenty of room for self righteousness and resentment. Catch almost any mom in a candid moment, and she talks emotionally about women on a different path. Wendy neri, a stay at home mom of an 11 and 8 year old in la jolla, california, says plainly, i have felt superior to the moms who aren't there with their kids. Mary kay masters not related to me , mom of a 3 year old and stepmother of two grown girls, who works for a utility company in rochester, new york, says that she and her sister in law simply try not to discuss the subject of work anymore because it's become so combustible between them: it's like i'm the bad mom because i put my son in daycare. She'd say, 'you mean you drop him off at seven thirty and you don't pick him up until five? how can you do that to him?' i'd say, 'people have to do what they have to do.' i have to work my family depends on my income for the mortgage.