Mary Quinn, 48, right, of Greenwich, Conn., is seen at her home with her daughters Paulina, 11, left, and Isabelle, 17, Thursday at their home in Greenwich. Quinn, laid off in December from her job in the financial industry, is actively seeking work but in the meantime savors her unexpected time with her daughters.

New York ? Soon after New Yorker Geralyn Lucas was laid off from her television job in January, she took her 2-year-old son to the playroom of her apartment building. She realized she had never been there before.

Within minutes she had inadvertently broken all the cleanliness rules. “I wore shoes,” confesses Lucas, 41. “I brought food. I changed his diaper. I didn’t know those things weren’t allowed.”

When she took Hayden to his playgroup at a toddler center, she had to ask the little boy for directions to his class. And when she went to the pediatrician’s office, the nurses were so used to seeing the nanny that they didn’t recognize Lucas.

What they’ve been missing

Lucas and other laid-off women like her are involuntarily experiencing the life of a stay-at-home mom, and they are getting to know a lot more about the details of their children’s daily existence. They are also discovering some of the things they have been missing.

Though the mass layoffs of this recession have so far affected mostly men, more than 800,000 women have lost their jobs since the end of 2007. For the mothers among them, it means that, suddenly, Mommy’s home, often for the first time in many years.

For many of these women, unemployment has no doubt been terrifying. But for some — particularly those who have the financial resources to ride out the storm — it has been a precious opportunity to get to know their children a little better.

Small pleasures

Mary Quinn, a 48-year-old mother from Greenwich, Conn., was laid off in December after 18 years at a Manhattan investment company, but a severance package has bought her some time to find a new position. After years in which her husband was the main caregiver, she is finding the time off with her children to be an unexpected blessing.

She is savoring small pleasures such as picking up her 11-year-old daughter, Paulina, from school and having a little snowball fight on the way home, or trying out new recipes with Isabelle, 17.

“As a mom, it’s been amazing,” says Quinn, a former vice president and portfolio administrator at Oppenheimer Capital LLC. She notes with delight how, for the first time, she is the one who gets to hear the schoolday tales that Paulina comes home with.

“I’m getting the stories from her directly now, not secondhand from my husband like before,” she says. “I used to be so envious.”

Anxiety still high

But as she well knows, many laid-off mothers have no time to smell the roses.

“I can’t say I’ve seen any mothers who see being laid off as a positive thing,” says Jessica Polsky, a career counselor at New York’s Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. “Even if it’s $10 an hour that they made, it’s something, and they really needed it. They need to get out and get new jobs.”

Even for women who may have a financial cushion for at least a few months, it is hard to focus on the joys of your family at a time of economic crisis, says Carol Evans, CEO of Working Mother Inc., which publishes Working Mother magazine.

“It’s very difficult to juggle anxiety about the economy and pleasure with your kids,” says Evans, who herself was laid off from a job 10 years ago and recalls feeling a combination of happiness — at the possibility of a summer with her kids — and panic. “And anxiety is at a fever pitch right now.”

‘Mixed bag’

Editor Sasha Emmons, 34, was laid off in January while pregnant with her second child but found a new job a month later.

“It was a mixed bag for me,” says Emmons, the Brooklyn mother of a 3-year-old daughter. “On the one hand it was definitely nice, especially pregnant, to have a bit of a rest. And my daughter loved me coming to pick her up from school. It was nice to do art projects and cooking, baking and yoga class together.”

On the other hand, “I would have enjoyed it a lot more had I known that everything was going to be OK financially,” says Emmons, now an editor at a parenting Web site.

She also learned something from her brief experience being laid off: Financial pressures aside, she prefers working.

“I just felt kind of lost without a job,” Emmons says. “Everyone talks about the mommy wars, and you always have that question as a mother: Is the grass greener on the other side? For me, the question was answered.”