When we had kids 20 years ago, we moved from the city to the suburbs (although I have heard that it doesn't make a difference, city mothers are just as bad). I became a stay at home dad when my second child was born because my wife was out earning me by quite a bit. That lasted for about 5 years until the kids were in school and I went back to my corporate office. The funny thing is that being a SAHD is just about the lowest rung on the stay at home parent pecking order. Even women that weren't part of the in crowd would shun you. The problem for these mothers is that they sometimes can't control what kids their kids hang out with. At first I couldn't understand why I seemingly couldn't arrange play dates or seemed to miss out on fun outings and all that crap. My wife even complained to me that I wasn't trying hard enough but eventually it became apparent that it wasn't just me, these women were playing a power game.
One of the queen bees, a stay at home Stanford educated b*tch, had a son that really wanted to hang out with my son. I remember one occasion when they were about 12 or so and we invited this kid to my son's birthday party but by that time she had been steering her son clear of our lower caste son (in her mind). But she called us while the party was going on and begged us to drop her son at our son's party because her son was having a meltdown that he couldn't come to our party. That was probably the last time I talked to her even though she lives about 200 yards from our house.
The worst women are the ones that send their kids to private schools. Insufferable.
At the end of the day, all this attention and jockeying for best teachers or private schools really didn't do much. The Stanford grad mentioned above had three sons and so far two have gone to third tier state schools, while both of mine went to top tier state universities and we had a laissez faire attitude about their education.
Would I do it again? Sure, but I would definitely have a more independent mind about all this. My wife struggled because she worked the whole time and most of the stay at home moms didn't look too kindly on career women and cut them out of their activities.
