Things are not going to change from the outside - it's time to stop with the external locus of control. It would be great if large corporations changed their policies on part-time, and maternity leave, and installed day care centers....but it's probably not going to happen any time soon. The working married women who think the current state of affairs is unfair will find themselves, increasingly, competing with green card-bearing males from other cultures who have no problem placing 100% of the domestic obligations on their wives.

In other words, companies will only change when they are forced to change by MEN, and that will only happen when women make the lives of married working males as uncomfortable as the lives of married working females.

Much of the domestic duty imbalance is, in my view, wholly the fault of women. I have many friends who gripe and snipe at the way their husband puts away dishes or dresses the kids - that he's not doing it the 'right' way. Women have to give up the idea of perception - sharing responsibility means compromising on getting things done your way.

My husband and I went round and round on this - he simply refused to do anything domestic. He wouldn't SAY he was refusing, of course - he would just never get around to it. I worked 70 hours a week and travelled constantly and when I finally had enough I hired a) a lawn care company, b) a house cleaner and c) a pool care company. I just did it - it wasn't worth arguing about any more. My h bitched about the cost but in the end couldn't argue that I should spend MY precious few free hours doing chores he had refused for years to do. End of story, end of my lack o competitiveness with men in the workplace who had stay-at-home wives to tend to them (and yes, there is an easy-to-detect imbalance).

Working wives need solve this for themselves by negotiating change with their working husbands. Trust me, when they find themselves caught between the rock of the working wife and the hard place of the company policy, they'll be as eager to agitate the company for change as women have historically been. Then and only then will companies likely listen.

I got that too. It was good writing, not so subtle that people should have missed that.

My ex-husband went bald really early - mid 20s. It bummed him out, not because it presaged aging and dying but because he looked different and not better. The thing is - his hair was just OK. He didn't have a great head of it, it wasn't beautifully cut or styled - it was just hair. He's an engineer and pretty practical, and I think the biggest thing that bothered him about losing it was the vulnerability to sunburn - it was a drag to always remember to put sunblock on his head, and then it would sweat off and run into his eyes, and he had to remember to reapply....the solution to *that* problem was a baseball hat. I got used to seeing him in one 90% of the time.

Eventually we got out the clippers and cut it really really short - a '1' setting. My ex is not traditionally handsome, but he is attractive with strong masculine features. The short buzz looks better than the over-long monk's tonsure he'd been sporting, and puts his features to good display.

But I don't think it's the shortness of the remaining hair that is sexy so much as his self-confidence, which it must be noted he had in abundant supply before the hair loss. He sports the shaved head with an air of total indifference. You know just by looking at him that nothing as trivial as hair 'gets' to him. With or without hair, he has an air of quiet command and total self-acceptance, and that's what makes him so attractive.

So shaving can work but from my point of view those it works best with have, by nature of their personality, already self-selected that choice. In other words, it's something the confident choose, not something the less confident can or should be talked into.

Though I myself prefer the shaved look to the receding/too-long-and-limp-locked look of so many baldness sufferers, I wouldn't advise the boyfriend to shave his head just yet..if he's uncomfortable with losing his hair, it would be a rather radical change to expect him to embrace and love having none. I think he needs to spend time considering it, and do so side-by-side with another equally radical option: getting hair implants. Maybe ask a number of close friends which they'd prefer to see - his normal hairline restored via implants vs. a shaved head. Listening to them might help put his self image relative to his body image into a different perspective than the one he has now (which understandably, is mostly of loss and mourning).