It's so hard to put this stuff into words but I have been very moved by these letters and articles. And I really relate to the terror of life, life out of your control, that having a child brings. I knew this from the moment I had my baby nineteen months ago. I had never been in this situation before. It's like marriage really - for better, for worse, in sickness, and in health -except you don't know what you're getting and you have no way out. And combined with this is the tidal wave of love and sheer ... connectedness ... I feel with my son. And when I'm not feeling connected to him - for example I'm away from him this week while he's with his dad and grandparents - I feel a hole inside. A part of me is living for the moment I see him again.

I've become much more spiritually dependant since having him because as I look around the world I can't find any other source of security or comfort when faced with the future that comes anywhere near to giving me the succour that I need. So much courage and bravery and sheer fortitude is needed - and yet the joke is you can have none of this and still have a child! Leo - my son - has dragged me kicking and screaming into an appreciation of the vastness of life, how small I am in the face of it, and how connected he and I are for eternity. The other incredible thing is that, most of the time, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"Why do women feel like they have to define themselves as mothers or as motherless, as stay-at-home moms or working women, or the endless variety of identities that veer from that looming norm?"

Because in any community these are some of the most important identifiers. The decision to have a child is one of the biggest decisions of them all. I think it's a GOOD thing that this is coming to be seen as a choice, rather than something you just do and then the definging thing is whether or not you moan about it as though you're a victim of your reproductive capability - which so many women used to be. How you raise your children is a far less interesting question to me becuase it's always such a media beat up, pretending there's a huge divide between mothers when actually I think they have far more in common than not. But whether or not you've chosen to have children? I can't think of any bigger question really. What would you have women defined by anyway? Their religion? Their hair colour?

Why aren't there articles about men who are choosing not to be fathers? Because so many men still don't see that they have any primary role to play in the raising of children, and so many women don't either. I agree with you that the differences between men and women's attitudes to children are stark, but this is just a symptom of the problem rather than a problem in itself. I meet a lot of men with children and you really couldn't say it was a defining thing about them in any way. It doesn't seem to have changed their lifestyle or outlook one iota, and so you really couldn't say it was very important.

I think it's right and proper that the presence of children should define you to some degree, but so far the balance is out of whack - it defines women far too much and men far too little.

Reminds me of that scene in Heartburn when people are defining themselves at a dinner party: Nora Ephron says 'mother, wife, in love, writer, Jewish' - something like that. Her husband, Carl Bernstein says: 'IN love, journalist, jewish, father'. (Nora beams - but unfortunately hte in love part didn't refer to her!) I think one of the points of this scene though is that men define themselves much more by their profession than women do.

Ron Livingstone also starred as Burger in series 5 and 6 of Sex and The City. He played Carrie's male doppelganger - sensitive, literary, and quick with the one liner - added to that was a dose of rage against women and a twisted vulnerability that left me loving him and hating him. Like so many men I know. He's one of the only men I've seen on television who is soft with an edge, spikey yet sweet. Like Burger the character Livingstone plays in Standoff gets his girlfriend's hopes up - then lets her down (the writers are not afraid to write her character as often being twice the man he is) - and then leaves her hoping again, ready for the next episode. I love seeing men like this - men like the men of my generation, men as sensitive and vulnerable as women yet not in the same way - on TV.