I'm the last person on earth to be an advocate for the stay-at-home-mommy movement, (if such a thing exists in real life and not just in the minds of media pundits.) I will retch if someone tells me that Women Belong At Home. I sincerely believe that women should be able to pursue careers outside the home without anyone bashing their parenting skills, at least any more than they bash men for the same. I'm about as rabidly feminist as they come.

But people who sacrifice their ambitions to care for a severely disabled child, or any ailing family member for that matter, do not deserve to be called lazy.

My mother wanted to be an interior designer but had to leave university just a few months shy of graduation to care for her alcoholic mother when her father died. She did go back to work when I was a child, but as a secretary. She never went back to get her degree. It would never, ever occur to me to call her a spoiled waste of her family's money because she had to make less than ideal choices. Good grief.