Many women don't.  Staying home, because I chose to, felt as if it was a real decision, you know?  I wasn't home because it wasn't possible or acceptable for me to work.  

That said, I always assumed that I would go back someday.  When health problems made that an impossibility, I have to admit that I was a little bitter.  Not bitter about my choice so much, but bitter that society thought so little of what I had spent the past years doing that I felt rather written off.