This thread is starting to make me really cross, not because of anyone's opinions either way, but because of the way we constantly end up feeling polarized as mothers. In so many different areas we are put in a position where we feel we have to defend our own choices to the point of decrying everyone else's - whether that's breast or bottle, stay at home or back to work, vaginal or caesarian, it just goes on and on. It strikes me that we are getting a really rough deal with this, every step of the way we feel challenged and undermined when we are all just doing a really difficult job the very best we can.
It's a bit of a tangent, I'm sorry, but I have a theory that it's because we are generally underappreciated as mothers, and I'm not just talking about SAHMs - we get very little thanks and very few compliments, and it does start to make you insecure. If you never had an appraisal or a nice comment at work, you'd get really jumpy about how you were doing, but we all go on day after day without people often (ever?) saying that we're doing a good job with our children.
Again, this isn't directed at anyone posting. It just seems to be a recurrent theme with so many threads.