I feel guilty for working and guilty when I am not working. Am I supposed to be at home with my kids?

“She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.”

The woman Proverbs closes with buys a field, plants a vineyard out of her own earnings, and trades profitably, all while running a household. The passage was composed as an acrostic poem in praise of capable womanhood, and it was never meant as a job description for a single day. Whatever else it settles, it does not present paid work and motherhood as opposites.

“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

Paul is dealing with believers dividing into camps over practices Scripture had never settled, and he pointedly refuses to legislate. Instead he tells each person to be fully persuaded in their own mind, then spends the rest of the chapter telling both sides to stop despising each other. Some genuinely important decisions are left to conscience, and this is one of them.