NY- Haley [pictured] slow-danced in a midtown Manhattan club packed with men last week, stripping off her clothes under the lights of a glittering disco ball and selling personal performances for $20.

Her 15-year-old son was at home, knowing nothing about the lucrative work his mother has done for most of his life.

“He doesn’t have a clue,” said the 34-year-old from Brooklyn, who asked that her real name not be used. “He thinks I’m out taking care of an old lady or working in a bar.

“He’s too young,” she explained. “I don’t want him to imagine what I do.”

Haley isn’t the only one living a secret life in New York’s strip clubs. Many of the city’s exotic dancers hide their occupation from their families, surrounded by a stigma that associates stripping with sleaze and crime.

Some of the girls make big efforts to cover their tracks, explaining away their late-night jobs by claiming to be cocktail waitresses or bartenders.

Haley even took her son to a different nightclub during the day and lied to him, telling him she worked there.

The double life of exotic dancer Catherine Woods shocked her father last week as he struggled to deal with the news of her killing on Manhattan’s upper East Side.

Jon Woods thought his daughter had left her Columbus, Ohio, home to live her dream as a Broadway dancer. He only learned from cops that she had worked at a Times Square gentlemen’s club.

Her death is the talk of Manhattan’s strip joints, where several dancers told the Daily News they understand why she kept her job a secret.

“Nobody wants to admit they’re doing this,” said Haley, who dances at Rick’s Cabaret & Steakhouse on W. 33rd St. “Who wants their parents to know this is what you do?

“I know it’s hypocritical, but if I had a daughter doing this I’d walk on and rip her off the stage. This is not nice work to be doing, but we do it because it pays very well.”

Jasmine, 26, said she danced for a year and a half at a Long Island club a short drive from her mother’s home, but never told her. She’s now auditioning for Manhattan gigs.

“I used to be a cocktail waitress,” she said. “My mother said I needed to get out of that harsh profession. If she thinks that’s bad, imagine what she’d think if she knew what I really did?

“She’s far too conservative to understand what dancing really is,” she continued. “She’d think the clubs were dirty, sleazy places filled with prostitution and drug dealing.”

But keeping their profession secret is not easy, especially when dancers at high-end clubs earn well over $1,000 a night.

“I look like a stripper,” said Preston, 30, who dances at Scores West Side. “I have platinum blond hair down to my waist, I’m tanned and have huge breasts. People look at me and think immediately I’m in the sex industry.”

“My mom’s seen my dresses and my shoes and she knows I have expensive tastes, despite me saying I am a cocktail waitress,” she said. “Maybe my parents do know, but I would never tell them and they choose not to ask questions. I’m still scared of my mom. She’s a traditional Hispanic woman and I’m terrified of her.”

Eulala Castillo, 28, says coming clean takes guts. Castillo, a former Marine, uses the stage name Sammy at Rick’s Cabaret.

“I have no secrets with my family,” she said. “I used to tell them I was a cocktail waitress, but they’d ask me how to make certain cocktails and I didn’t know. They found out the truth quickly. But my parents are kind of liberal and they trust my judgment,” she added. “They know it’s just a job, and they know I can take care of myself. Now they keep asking me if I’ve met any celebrities at work.

“It is unusual to tell people, though. There is definitely a stigma attached.”