In the first years, a full-time mother may find herself off-balance and depressed by the loss of her former self, later she may suffer a feeling of unlived potential, she would feel as if she is wasting her talents, or a degree that she had spent years working to receive. A traditional women interviewed said, "not a day does by, when I don't think about what I might have achieved and how that would have felt. I look the part of the perfect wife and mother, and it's a part I play with all my heart. But I chose it because I did not see for me, a way of doing more, which doesn't mean I didn't want to or I don't want to." (MIA) .
The emotional vulnerability of the full-time wife also affects her family as well. The family has to bear the burden of the mother's grief for her undeveloped self. "A mother who shifts her own longings, ambitions and frustrations cannot tune in empathically to her family's joy and failures." (JESSICA BENJAMIN) When one partner is overloaded with stress, they could only go on with it but so long. "In America, the principal reason the divorce rate has risen so high is because the tendency of partners to backslide into traditional roles when their children are born, this destroying the equality and friendship they previously shared." (J.H. PLECK) As the spouse's role take turns and changes, the mothers doing most of the child care while the fathers earns most of the money, they grow apart. The wife at this point frequently feels offended by her husband's freedom to go on with his life. Also the husband feels lonely as his work carries him farther from the emotional center of the family.
Today, more than ever before we have mothers that are working and love to at the same time, but only those that are not at working forty to fifty hours a week. A part-time job allows mothers to basically get the best of both worlds. Recently, Working Mothers Magazine surveyed one thousand working mothers about how happy they felt.