Oddly, I didn't find myself offended at all by the author's burning need to have a baby any way she could. I can understand it, even though I will never reproduce. Maybe it's not that people want to pass on their DNA in some blind, selfish, instinctive way. For me, it was the overwhelming desire to have my husband's children, which is selfish and childish, yes, but born of love.

I don't think Hilling felt herself exploited. She sounds like a very good soul who did it only partly for the money, partly because she wanted to do something kind, and she was--what can I say?--a pro. And I think that some of Kucynski's behavior--her need to black her surrogate's name out of the sonograms--comes from the same source from which originates a lot of the anger and frustration here in this thread. Someone is carrying her baby, a tremendous favor despite the price--but she feels she has failed as a woman because she cannot. There are irrational days when I feel I have failed as a woman because I will never have children, either--my husband does not want them.

But that picture of her with the baby and nurse--that gave me pause, regardless of the nurse's race. She outsourced her pregnancy because she herself could not undergo it. There are worse ways to spend that kind of money. But why oh why does she need a nurse? That picture speaks volumes. It says, this woman thinks of parenthood as furthering the family line, of pregnancy as what makes us women...and then, almost as soon as the child takes his first breath, he is pushed into the arms of a paid professional. I don't understand this. She wanted this child so badly that she went to extremes to bring him into existence, but she's going to outsource his childhood...because...she has better ways to spend her days? If I wanted a child so desperately that I would do what she did, I could never relinquish his parenthood to someone else, no matter how highly qualified and paid. It makes that final photo so smug and triumphant, with her showing off her latest acquisition as if he were a new Birkin bag instead of a living, breathing baby boy before handing him off to his minder.

No, I'm not jealous. Only sad.

The Toys-R-Us near me carries children's clothes, and they were probably not all that expensive.

It's not overkill to point out, over and over, that the woman who was touted as an "ordinary American" (as opposed to That One who lives in a big bad blue city in a neighborhood with way too many bookstores and grocery stores that carry arugula and other subversive leafy greens) was, with her family, wearing clothes that had cost twice as much as some of the (possibly foreclosed) houses belonging to small RNC donors, who unwittingly financed her shopping spree.

Come on. Maybe wearing consignment shop clothes wasn't necessary, but she could have gone to Talbots, for pity's sake, if she wanted to be "just like" her potential constituents but dress just a little better.

Um, how could you not know this was an SUV?

Looks like the suburban breeder yuppie zombies just claimed another for their own. Yeah, yeah, I've heard this claim before: "But we have TWO CHILDREN! We need more SPACE!" Um, my parents had a midsize, American-made stationwagon. There were three of us, one in a big, bulky car seat, with another kid often along for the ride, and bags of groceries in the back. Yeah, it was a little crowded, but you know what? We didn't mind. We were used to it. We behaved without fighting and without needing to be distracted by a built-in dvd player. I guess parenthood is just different these days.

I don't know what you were thinking. Current gas prices have apparently lulled you into a false sense of security. In a year, you're going to regret you ever set eyes on that behemoth. And I don't get it: Volvos are good, reliable cars. Why is it so expensive to maintain one?

I'm not picking on you for having kids, just buying into the whole consumer culture that surrounds modern reproduction. You don't need a bigger car. You really don't. If you were really thinking seriously about the environment, you wouldn't mind sacrifice a little comfort and discipline for better gas mileage.