(Getting) Back on the Career Track - Main Motivation

The book I mentioned a few posts ago has turned out to be great. So far, "Back on the career track" has covered reasons for wanting to go back to work, insecurities, getting back to pace on the topic, networking, and types of work (full-/part-time, consulting, etc). This is all common-sense stuff, and confirms my own analysis and thoughts of the past months. I'm now just starting on my main "challenge", where I feel most uncertain, which is "support" for the family, i.e. care options and needs for the kids. Although all three of mine are at school / kindergarden, I do not want them to stay  there for the maximum time possible, which is incredibly generous and long in our case (but we pay a lot for this!): from 8 am to 6 pm. More on what I "learn" from these upcoming chapters later, but the starting paragraph hit the point so well, I will quote it here: "'Mom' my children would tell me when I came home, 'you're so much less stressed now that you're working.' In the evening, I was energetic and thrilled to spend time with them...I began to wonder if it wasn't better for them to have an enthusiastic mom in a great mood on evenings and weekends, instead of a stressed-out, not-so-happy mom full-time. My husband had similiar thoughts." (p.139)