When you’re a stay-at-home mother you have to pretend it’s really boring, but it’s not. It’s enriching and fulfilling, and an amazing experience. And then when you’re a working mother you have to pretend that you feel guilty all day long.

Poehler is critiquing the contradictory social scripts imposed on mothers. In her framing, stay-at-home mothers are expected to downplay the intellectual and emotional richness of caregiving, as if admitting fulfillment would be naïve or unambitious. Working mothers, conversely, are expected to perform constant guilt, as if employment necessarily signals neglect. The quote exposes how motherhood is policed through competing ideals—selfless devotion versus professional achievement—so that whichever path a woman chooses, she is pressured to apologize for it. Its significance lies in naming these double binds and suggesting that maternal experience is complex, varied, and not reducible to public performances of boredom or remorse.