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Lunch break is for pumping breast milk and worrying whether her baby has learned to walk without her.

At the end of the work day, traffic makes her five minutes late to day care so she's slapped with a $30 fine. Back home, she bathes, feeds and puts baby to bed only to be met with a sink full of dirty dishes.

Working moms: Is any job title more redundant? They've long been under appreciated.

But now they're under fire.

In Texas, a state lawmaker proposed a bill to charge parents of public school students with a misdemeanor and $500 for missing their kid's parent-teacher conference. In Ohio, a working mother is charged an extra $10 a day by her day care for its staff to handle bottled breast milk.

Writer Mary Eberstadt goes so far as to blame most problems of today's youth - from biting toddlers to depressed teens - on working moms and divorce in her book "Home-Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Wonder Drugs and Other Parent Substitutes."

"Divorce and dual income, dual income and divorce,'' she writes. "The refrain hums like a mantra through the literature" of dysfunctional youth.

Take it easy, Mary.

It's hardly fair to attack mothers. What working-mom opponents fail to realize is that many women need to work. Without Mom's job, many families would go without health insurance and their children would go without higher education, or quite simply, meals.

Gone are the days of being able to survive on a single income - at least for most Americans, say working moms. But stay-at-home advocates contend we can make it on one salary with a little self-discipline and budgeting.

I'm about to find out who is right.

I recently quit my full-time job at the newspaper to do freelance writing as a way to have more time home with our son.

This regular Sunday column and other articles will continue, but I will no longer be a health reporter with daily deadlines. Rather than attend press conferences on prescription drug coverage, I'll sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider.'' Instead of writing about the uninsured, I'll read "Pat the Bunny.''

Money, or lack of it, will become a bigger factor than it already is for my husband and me. Staying home and freelancing is sure to bring lots of quibbles about how much I spent on lattes and he spent on lunches. Let the coupon-clipping and ban on eating out begin.

I wish I could say I had some noble reason for "opting out.'' That I was doing it because of what Jackie Kennedy said: "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.''

I'm not. Because plenty of working moms succeed at raising children by focusing on quality time, rather than quantity. Whereas the June Cleaver who chaperones every field trip and commandeers the carpool line condemns her little darling to years of helplessness with all that helicopter parenting.

I wish I could say I found the changing table more fulfilling than the office cubicle. I don't. I enjoy my job.

There's much validity to the argument that we're better mothers if we have some worthwhile activity outside the home that has nothing to with Pampers or preschool.

So why give up satisfying work and all the security, mental stimulation and adult interaction that come with a full-time paycheck and 401K? One word: Guilt.

Every working mother has felt it each time she kisses her child goodbye. The guilt stays with you throughout the day, no matter how great the child care is. It was enough to reduce me to tears.

What a wimp. Especially since I have a generous mother-in-law and mom who took turns baby-sitting while I worked, allowing my husband and I to postpone the day-care route as long as possible. Still, I simply missed the company of a 4-month-old.

To stay at home or work full time is big decision many women don't have the luxury of being able to make. So ease up on working moms and don't punish them for doing what certainly is the hardest job around.

I'm still unsure whether I made the right decision.

But my internal mommy wars will have to be put on hold for now.

After all, there are coupons to clip and an itsy-bitsy spider waiting to climb a water spout.