Sure as Mother's Day comes and goes every year, working moms will always want the most elusive thing there is: more time. Time to get all our work done, well, and still have all the time we want with our family. Most days, that's tough to come by, and no amount of macaroni and glue will produce it.

So it's no surprise that the Society for Human Resource Management has found two surveys that say full-time working moms would gladly take pay cuts if it means more time with their children:

• 43 percent of working moms would take a pay cut for more time at home
• 51 percent would quit their jobs if their spouse/significant other made enough money to support the family

I've been there, and made the decision to work part time and then freelance when my three kids were young. I gave up a lot of income during those years. And, no, our financial future is not fully figured out, but I wouldn't change a thing about that decision because I felt it so strongly in my gut that it's what we needed as a family. But pulling back from the work force is not a decision that should be made lightly. The pay you give up in the short term, based on family economic and care needs at that moment in yours and your family's life, has long-term consequences. The Center for Work-Life Policy, a research group founded by Sylvia Ann Hewlet (author of several great books on women and work), found that women lose an average of 18 percent of their earning power when they temporarily leave the work force. Women in business sector jobs lose 28 percent.

That adds up to big, big numbers even if you're able to work your way back to a full-time position in the same field, which only 40 percent of even "high-powered professionals" do, according to this New York Times Op-Ed piece.

So, no, I wouldn't change a thing because the path I chose landed me right here, and that's an amazing thing. But in the years since my kids were born, I've seen good friends who made the choice to pull out of the work force to be at home full time lose their husbands to all kinds of unforeseen tragedy: death, infidelity, financial mismanagement. A solid financial decision at one point in our lives can take on a whole new set of implications when life throws its worst at us. And it will.

So this is what I tell my daughters: Work. Find work you love, at least like. Find work that can be flexible when you need it to be flexible. Not an easy assignment, I know. But don't plan your life without planning to do work that you want to do for most of it. You will need it.

Don't let this discussion end here. I want to know what you think about pulling back or opting out of the work force during our (hopefully) long lives.