‘i would regret it every day if i had gone back to work after having my boys. To me a mum who works is a failed mum. My husband earns the money and i look after the boys and home, that's how it should be. How would you feel if your son's wife was working because your son didn't earn enough money’
Araacarawa has a very strange view of a failed mum then! Surely what any good parent wants is for their children to grow up into a successful, happy, well rounded adult with sound values? So if you achieve that while also retaining your career, then how is that failure? Sounds like win win to me! 
The fact is, I suspect we all know (though a small number of people who are dissatisfied with their own lives don’t want to admit) that it’s perfectly possible to raise children well as a WOHP or a SAHP. The key contributing factors to whether children grow up with good mental health, a good work ethic, achieving well at school, are not whether the mother works. If you looked at my children (in their 20s, all doing really well, happy and having achieved well educationally, and in work) you wouldn’t know whether I’d worked or not. Likewise for their peers- some of them had mums who worked, some didn’t. You’d need to look at the mums to see the evidence of who’s worked- not the kids!
And there’s the rub i think. This ‘debate’ trundles on and on because a minority of people aren’t content with the choice they’ve made for its own sake. The only way they can be comfortable with it is by denigrating the opposite choice.
I’m a WOHM. It doesn’t mean I need to denigrate SAHM. Do it, if it suits you and your partner. And for your own, specific set of circumstances, it may well be the thing that suits your children... you might have a child with specific needs which make it difficult to find childcare, or you may have a child who won’t settle into childcare, or you may not have access to quality childcare in your area. I can quite see why those circumstances would mean you might give up work.
But you cannot extrapolate from that, that anyone else ‘should’ be a SAHM. Or that they aren’t one because they couldn’t cope with it because it’s so tremendously difficult.
FWIW I think being at home with little ones can be a slog, it can be isolating and a lot of the daily tasks are quite relentless - but none of it is difficult per se.
I’m always a bit confused by the people who keep saying SAHM aren’t valued by society... what do you want to happen? How should society show it values you? Surely if you’re doing it because you want to, what extra validation do you need?
I work. The validation comes from my salary and pension, the work appraisals, the respect of my colleagues, and as I’m in a role working with young people, yes, the fact that I’m doing something socially beneficial. In my role as a mum, I had validation from raising my children into lovely young adults. I never expected anything more than that... isn’t that enough?