Stay-at-Home Mom on Parenting: No Respect

I am so tired of being TIRED! I spend all day cleaning and cooking and teaching and playing with my kids. When I finally do get a moment to myself, it's spent reading a chapter in my biology book or studying slides and models for class. I hate that stay-at-home moms are made to feel guilty when we want an hour—or, heaven forbid, a whole night!—to ourselves. I hate feeling guilty every time I sit down and watch a TV program that isn't animated or doesn't have puppets. I hate the occasional sneers I get from working women, as if I can't possibly be on their level, or the assumption that ALL stay-at-home moms are lazy and sit their kids in front of the TV all day. And I hate that some of us stay-at-homers feel the need to fill our days up, just so we can try to make it seem that we're busy every waking moment.

WHY?! It's not like our husbands are at work busting it out ALL day, or that working moms don't go out for lunches with their coworkers. The reality is that stay-at-home moms have it hard, too! Only our jobs are from sunrise 'til sunset, and we're on-call at night, too. We don't get paid. We don't get raises. We don't get a dental plan or 401k. But what bothers me most is that we don't get the respect that people in the workforce get.

I know I can't be the only one who feels this way. Am I?