Of course you don't have to be a mother to experience the tension between work and personal life. Fathers feel it, and so do men and women who are not parents. Everyone wants to enjoy life and also earn a living. But consider that studies released by Cornell University sociologists show that mothers may be discriminated against in the workplace. That's right, it seems that moms suffer when competing for jobs against similarly qualified fathers and childless men and women. If that's true, it means that becoming a father can result in a generous bonus and a healthy pay raise to help provide for a growing family, while becoming a mother means you have chosen to surrender all of your professional goals and are no longer deserving of a bonus, a pay raise or a life.

What is a mom to do? Fight the good fight trying to convince others that we deserve both good pay and a good life? With my dollars, my time and until my last breath, I will support anyone who chooses to fight that battle. But I will not be on the front lines because I have chosen a different route. It's the one less traveled, at least for the time being, and it's the one that focuses on changing myself instead of others. Maybe some day, I and others who choose this route can create mom-friendly workplaces so that our children don't encounter what I have heard referred to as "the mommy penalty."

By the way, the Business Week article concludes with the story of Ted Husted who has "reclaimed his life" by splitting his time between freelance consulting and serving as an unpaid contributor to an open-source software project. He attends his children's weekend sporting events, lunches with his wife at least once a week, prunes the maple trees in his front yard and generally enjoys life while he also earns a living. The article doesn't say whether he earns as much as he could working for someone else, but I don't think it matters. He's got a lifestyle now, and it just doesn't get any better than that.