Some Day My 9-to-5 Job Will Come

Most of our more respectable fantasies have found a place on reality TV. There's the show where designers swoop in to organize your clutter and the one about the nanny who figures out how to keep the kids from using their potties as weapons. There's even a show about wife swapping.

But TLC has found one more untapped fantasy—at least for mothers. We're not talking about "The Manny." No, this is the one where you're a woman who's been home with your kids so long that you can't remember the last time you wore hard-soled shoes. Then someone (say, former sitcom star Tracey Gold) comes by and says, "Hey, you know how you always wanted to be a fashion designer, cop or chef? Well, we'll give you a week to try it out—without your family knowing. Then at the end of the week you get to choose whether to restart your career or stay home. And guess what: your kids and husband will support you either way."

Sounds dreamy, right? Well, not to everyone. If the initial reaction to the "Secret Life of a Soccer Mom," (Mondays at 10 p.m. ET) is any indication, TLC has struck one of the rawest nerves of parenting. In the show's March 3 premier Adrian Stark, a mother of three girls in suburban California, decides to go back to work full-time as a high fashion designer after 10 years at home. Stark's daughters are awestruck by the gowns she makes, and when she's offered a job, her physician husband gets teary with joy: "I'm seeing Adrian get something that I have been unable to give her, which is completeness."

This family is so sweet it makes your teeth ache. But as soon as the show aired, TLC's online message boards were jammed with comments from women outraged that Adrian would choose a career over being a stay-at-home mom (SAHM in parent lingo). The posts said the premise of the show is "sick" and Adrian is "selfish." One mom wrote, "Let's show the other side of the story … how the kids' world is going to be turned upside down by having to go to day care." Another woman goes even further: "Unless you're about to starve there is no reason for you to be at work. If you didn't want to raise your children, you should not have had them. It's child abandonment."

Adrian's wish to fill a missing creative void raised even more hackles: "Could any more feminist crap be shoved down our throats? The idea that you need a career to be complete? How about feeling complete by parenting your kids the right way?" And even if you agree with the mothers who support Adrian's choice to offer her daughters a career role model, you can see why some SAHMs might be a little miffed by a program that opens with a song whose lyrics include "time to lose the minivan…"

Women have been in the workforce for decades now, but the tension between moms who stay at home and those who, by choice, have jobs outside the home continues to brew. When in mixed company, mothers on both sides of the fence tend to tiptoe around the subject. Totally unvarnished confessions of either boredom or guilt are usually left to gatherings of moms of one's own kind. (Disclaimer: I was home with two kids for eight years before going back to an "outside" job.)