I always find this subject interesting, maybe because my experience and outlook is a little sideways. I was a stay at home mom for nearly 20 years. After my 4 children were nearly grown, I finished my college degree and went to work full time in the IT field.

The mothers described in this article are exactly the mothers I remember as friends and acquaintances. They loved telling themselves and one another how motherhood was the 'hardest job' ever. Complaining and kvetching on how hard they had it and how the working women & the rest of the world does not understand their scarifice. I didn't believe it then and still don't.

Stay at home motherhood is a luxury and like luxuries, are to be enjoyed. I loved the easy summer days gossiping at the pool, watching my children practice for dance recitals and going on family vacations. I did what I wanted, when I wanted. I was the master of my household, and the children took on activities with my approval. My husband was absolutely no help, but I'm easy going enough and it didn't bother me at all.

Now, as a woman with a professional career and all my children grown and gone, I find this new lifestyle lacking and disappointing. I cannot emphasize enough that expecting a person to do same one thing 40+ hours a week is cruel and maddening. At work, I am expected to write code hour after hour in a cube farm with the people who has got to be the dullest on the planet. It is rewarding to see the end product, but truthfully, doing housework on my schedule, having time to read, watch old movies and especially being with my children everyday was so much more fun.

O well, no one at home now, so I might as well go to work and make some money. I am good at what I do, and I do know how good I have it. I had it both ways and afterall middle age is about change.

Once I read that church leaders in 15th century Spain debated whether it was Christian to enslave the indigenious people in the new world. Ultimately, the church gave permission to enslave as long as the slaves were converted to Christianity. With modern eyes, this decision does not seem overly charitable.

At the same period in history, the Mayans, the Aztecs (future slaves of the Spanish) were performing human sacrifice without any debate as to the rightness of the act. It was an accepted practice.

Can the two cultures be compared in this way? I am not finding fault with the native people of South America nor am I suggesting that the Spanish were somehow superior, but explaining the difference use of power at different times in a culture's development.

In the film Munich (btb, has been done before as a TV movie and with the same story), Israel questions its motives, the outcomes and the effect on themselves. It could be the Palestinans do as well besides, but can we see it sometime?

Personally, I believe both the Israelis and Palestinans are damned. They murder each other's children AND push their own children out for gun/bomb fodder.

I was a stay at home mom for 15 years. Now that the children are gone, I began a career as a software developer.

A career ain't no great shakes; to be expected to work more than 8 hours at a time on one task is mind numbing and soul killing. But I do like the pay and I do like the accomplishment of finishing a project. On the other hand, I miss being the master of my domain (my household) and I miss being with my children.

Having said that and please understand I love my children and I am glad they exist, but I didn't NEED to be a mother. Nor do I believe that being a mother made my life more meaningful than if I wasn't a mother. I suspect fulfillment is found from within (excuse the cliche).

So people, do whatever and I can't believe this needs to be said..no one can say what is good for another, especially from someone who approaches it academically like David Brooks. He seems to live in a la-la land where one size is forever fitting all. Here's a motherly lesson my children know by rote: "Always" is never the truth and "never" is always a lie and absolutes don't exist anywhere in the physical universe.

I dunno...this seems really really and truly fictional and so very third world.

Why should there be any reason to discuss a former sex life that doesn't involve disease? Isn't sex a private matter? Why should Doug tell the husband the sin? Did Doug have sex with the husband? Is the wife the property of the husband? Don't give me "that's what they believe" BS. Slavery is against the law. I'm a mother and so definitely not a virgin...does that make me unpure? If so, why? Is there an on-off switch in my vagina? What makes me at the before sex and after sex stage different? Neither my husband or I were virgins when we were married, is our marriage less meaningful or less justified or deserving of respect? Even after 30 years?

But then again, people can be incredibly so very very stupid.