Working mothers are just fine

The BBC has a report about how working mothers and stay at home mothers raise pretty much the same kind of kids, health-wise.
This doesn't surprise me. My mom tried to stay at home with us and then went back to work when I was a kid. My predominant memories of her at home are not particularly pleasant; she seemed angry and stressed all the time. Now I realize she was bored and frustrated. Everything seemed to even out when she went back to work.
Better people than me have pointed out how sexism drives the debate between stay at home and working mothers, the typical attempt to divide natural allies and disperse their power. The problem is that by even entertaining the question of whether it makes a difference or not how much time a mother spends with her child is it is a distraction from the real issues behind a parent/child relationship. And now we have submitted to an obvious falsehood, that the parent/child relationship is somehow different from other relationships and it can be measured and evaluated against a set standard.
A parent/child relationship is like any other relationship, in that individual considerations are going to outweigh any other factor. A woman can be a good mother to one child and a rotten mother to another. The child herself determines the structure of the relationship as well. No one factor controls the "meaning" of a relationship between any two people, even if they are in a parent/child relationship.
That being said, there are guidelines to help any relation, regardless of its structure. And one of the knowns is that if one person feels oppressed or resentful, the relationship is going to suffer. And women who feel required to stay at home when they don't want to are bound to be surly and resentful.
My mother didn't act resentful towards us by any means. But she did act resentful. There's no telling how that affected our lives or our futures in the long run, but in the short run, there was a certain amount of emotional damage. We loved our mother and we were too young to know that she was unhappy because of her situation. But because we loved her, we didn't want her to be unhappy. And when she made herself happier, that anxiety was relieved.
There's alot of language about how and why and what you need to raise children. But it seems to me that the most important lesson children learn from their parents is how to relate to another person and how to love another person. Part of that lesson is teaching children that in order to love somebody, you must respect and appreciate that person's choices. That's not a lesson well-learned from creating a relationship between a woman who resents her life and her children.
I have no problem with women who stay home with their children. If that is your choice and you're happy with it, you're a good role model for your children. But if you are pressured into that choice and you are unhappy with it, your relationship with your children, as with anybody, is going to suffer. There's just not a formula or model that fits everyone.