I’m not sure if life was more difficult for women before or after the befuddling ERA movement. (And, I don’t mean Earned Run Average.)

I used to think I was really tough. You know, real cool ‘cause I was going to go to college and after that pursue my career. I was quite proud of my independent self and thumbed my nose at women who sat home with dumb kids.

That’s right, no marriage and kids stuff for me, only real work for a woman of the 80’s.

Until last summer when there was this baby. I can see your eyebrows raising. Well, put them down because it was my darling little nephew, Brett Renner.

I thought I’d spend a little spare time relaxing and babysitting him for a weekend last summer when he was about seven months old. Piece o’ cake. Babies only eat, sleep and look incredibly cute at that age, right?

Well, that’s only a minute part of it. But without going into details, I think I burned more calories that weekend than in one week of running at the rec center.

Between moussing his curlicue baby hair, strolling around the neighborhood and watching the Cubs games, there were bottles, diapers, baths, lots of crying and changing clothes.

It doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of a day I was pooped. I think I came out of the whole weekend with three more wrinkles and a gray hair or two.

It wasn’t all bad. Although I nearly had a nervous breakdown, I had a blast. The kid is really a riot.

Anyhow, it was then I decided that by pursuing my “woman of the 80s” plans, I was taking easy way out. The working world is a picnic compared to the real work of taking care of kids.

Today, women are pressured into careers. Feminists have gotten so cuaght up in ERA that many women who want to stay home and work raising their children feel they are looked down upon for not becoming something “better.”

Even I said once to my sister, who has five kids, “Oh, so you don’t work?” She gave me that look like, “If you only knew,” and said, “Work? I get up in the morning and run like a bat out of hell.”

I believe it.

It’s tough for women today. It’s sort of like the good ‘ole Catch 22. The working woman is criticized for sticking her kids in a day care and charged with having someone else raise them.

The woman who stays home with her kids is completely damned because she is subordinate to “male dominance.”

I for one will never understand what’s wrong with women doing whatever makes them happy.

The essence of ERA is to allow women the choice to do what they want and rightfully so. However, when it gets to the point where women are pressured to work and persecuted for staying home the purpose is defeated.

There are certainly a mountain of careers, causes and convictions out there in the big wide world, and raising children should not be considered any less significant. I don’t understand how it can be done, actually.

I have a friend who is married, has two kids and is a year younger than I am. She is always telling me how sometimes she wished she was doing something as great as I am.

Of course, I look at her and say she is the one with the important job. One I’m not sure I could or want to tackle.

The woman’s role in today’s society is a dificult one. Women will always be fighting, not necessarily for equal rights, but the choice without pressure from anyone to do what they please.

So now with a full experience of domestic duties under my belt I can honestly say that after thumbing my nose at homemakers for years, I still don’t want to be one.

It’s much easier to spend endless hours in front of a computer terminal, and get ulcers over deadlines.

omemaking women are brave souls.

Or should I say “womYn.”