With regard to your question whether mothers should work outside the home,
it is helpful to consider the matter from the perspective of the concept of a
Bahá’í family. This concept is based on the principle that the man has
primary responsibility for the financial support of the family, and the woman
is the chief and primary educator of the children. This by no means implies
that these functions are inflexibly fixed and cannot be changed and adjusted to
suit particular family situations, nor does it mean that the place of the woman
is confined to the home. Rather, while primary responsibility is assigned, it
is anticipated that fathers would play a significant role in the education of
the children and women could also be breadwinners. As you rightly indicated,
‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged women to “participate fully and equally in the affairs
of the world”.