Ann Romney maybelieve that focusing exclusively on raising children counts as work, and the majority of Americans may agree with her, but that's not how the federal government sees it.

As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, if you're poor, deciding to stay at home and rear your children is not an option. Thanks to welfare reform, recipients of federal benefits must prove to a caseworker that they have performed, over the course of a week, a certain number of hours of "work activity." That number changes from state to state, and each state has discretion as to how narrowly work is defined, but federal law lists 12 broad categories that are covered.

Raising children is not among them.