I know that in many cultures families stay together for longer periods than we currently consider mainstream, and sometimes even an American household included three generations (ala "The Waltons). My uncle lived with my grandfather until my grandfather died when my uncle was almost 40. But my uncle held a full-time job after he returned from the military after the Korean War. My uncle bought most of the groceries, paid the taxes on the house, and did most of the basic household repair work. They each did their own laundry and took turns cooking. My uncle would have felt emasculated had he expected a parent to provide for him. Their living arrangement was a matter of convenience and saved money for both of them--my grandpa wasn't in any way, shape, or form my uncle's caretaker.

I think the grating thing for parents in THIS generation is that the kids often have so much expensive stuff that they think are necessities. They're glued to their cellphones and their video games, don't pull their weight with household chores or expenses, and truly don't have a clue how much food and mortgage payments and taxes and basic expenses cost.

Maybe young adults today watched too much Friends during their formative years, seeing how those young adults lived in fancy apartments and wore beautiful clothes and didn't work much at all. Or maybe they've just absorbed the values of the White House. The current resident there moved in seven years ago to what had once been his father's house after failing at job after job and being rescued time and again by his dad and his dad's friends.

So I guess maybe the LW's slacker son will turn out okay--when it comes right down to it, he could still grow up to be President of the United States.

Okay, so a big sportsguy commits some crimes, lies about it to his bosses, and may be sentenced up to five years in prison. Is this too much of a punishment? Let's compare it to another case I'm intimately familiar with. My 54-year-old sister, a white woman from the lower middle class, was convicted of embezzlement in May and got a five-year sentence to a maximum security facility in Dwight, Illinois. She grew up in an abusive home with a violent but usually absentee father and an abusive, psychopath mother. The newspaper accounts quoted the prosecuting attorney saying she had lied more than any defendant he'd ever heard in his long career, but still. Five years in maximum security for theft? Almost two months after her incarceration, she was put into a lower-security facility, and following the normal course of imprisonment in Illinois will be eligible for parole in 2 1/2 years, when she is 57. In the face of that, I don't think 5 years is excessive for dog fighting and the sociopathic techniques of killing dogs that Vick has pleaded guilty to.

Will he be able to resume his career? I know my sister won't--the one she embezzled money from was her boss, and it's going to be darned hard for her to find another job that entrusts her with money. I suspect a lot of people have trouble finding work, much less multi-million dollar contracts, after getting out of jail, except for politicians. Maybe Vick should have aspired to that.

To me, the whole point of being liberal is that one truly believes in the democratic values of accepting the good in everyone, and one truly believes that everyone has a right to their beliefs and opinions, regardless of how much we may disagree with them. So perhaps the greatest test of true liberalism is whether we can still love the conservatives in our midst.

Men are vile pigs. And they have been waited on hand and foot by their adoring mommies for umpteen years...I'll never forget the brilliant woman on Oprah years ago who said her husband just dropped his underpants on the floor wherever he took them off, walked away, expected her to pick them up.

I remember reading that Jackie Kennedy left her clothes on the floor, too, to be picked up by someone else. And I do believe she was a woman.

We humans are individuals, and every marriage between individuals is different. Reading these responses is like reading different answers to a Rorschach test--most people are bringing their own personal success or failure at marriage, their own personal standards of household and laundry cleanliness, their own personal anger at or love for women or men, their own sense of responsibility for the children of family members, into their analysis. A few people have giving constructive suggestions about techniques for simplifying laundry or for "outsourcing" it. Frankly, Cary's response was pretty much on target, and pretty much said it all.