It seems like only yesterday that I was head-long into a career as a photojournalist, shooting everything from country fairs to car accidents for a newspaper covering the Cowichan region of Vancouver Island.

In fact, it was a decade ago…

I still keep in touch with three of my colleagues. All journalists, they went on to write for other newspapers (well two of them moved on to work for the big, bad, better paying government), and I, in the meantime, went back to school and eventually landed a job as a writer. (That’s why you are now reading this.)

But there must have been something in the water back then. Three of us “career women,” now all in our 30s are pregnant, and the fourth just bought a house with her man, and has turned over a new leaf working for a minimal-paying non-profit agency…

Call it the third wave of feminism, or just plain survival, but many women who are approaching middle age now juggle a career with young kids.

It’s often a case of necessity as the cost of living reaches astronomical proportions. One income just doesn’t cut it anymore. And when you counter in the cost of daycare with the cost of staying at home, well, it’s something we have to struggle with on a daily basis.

That $100 per child worth of taxable “beer and popcorn” money known as the Universal Child Care Benefit does not give many of us any incentive, or means, to stay home. And the child tax benefit, the monthly installment all parents receive and our parents before us received, seems to be dwindling to near extinction.

Truth be told, many women have to be both breadwinner and breast feeder in their households. The old argument that women should stay home with their kids just doesn’t hold water. It should be their choice. And if you’re lucky enough to be in this position, all I can say is, good on you.

It still bewilders me how the single mother, whether by choice or circumstance, manages to fill in all roles.

I know one who hauls her three kids to daycare and school before the crack of dawn to make it to her job on time, then picks them up, makes their dinner, helps them get their homework/chores done, and to bed to start again the next morning. And she does it with a smile... and her kids seem to be very well adjusted.

Me? I would love to stay at home with my soon-to-be two kids, but reality dictates, it ain’t gonna happen anytime soon unless I want to live in a cardboard box begging for scraps. And truth be told, I enjoy my work as it gives me a creative outlet and a reason to communicate with the outside world.

And really, like the old arguments of the second wave of the women’s liberation movement in the ‘60s, it should be my choice on how to live my life without guilt or judgement.

So to my fellow colleagues, and all those other working mothers out there, I wish you good luck with your futures, the tough decisions ahead, and the feel of love so strong, it’ll make the bad days seem worth it all.