> The natural concomitant to your hypothetical is "Some people drive 80 MPH and kill people - so let's outlaw cars."

That would make sense if I said we should outlaw sex, but I didn't. I said we should outlaw certain specific sexual practices which are risky not only for the participants, but for innocent bystanders as well. I'm no right-wing bible thumping do-gooder by any means - quite the opposite. I simply don't believe the argument that prostitution is a victimless consensual activity without repercussions holds water.

But yes, analogies are all usually quite readily dismantled, which was the other point I was making. Thank you for affirming it.

> I don't see how this reasoning doesn't lead you to advocate the criminalization of adultery just the same.

Well, I don't know what the legal status of adultery is, but isn't it true that adultery is generally legal grounds for divorce, which may not be a criminal proceeding, but it certainly has very real civil implications. I think you are right that the social thinking behind it is much the same as that behind the disdain for prostitution, yes.

BTW, I don't particularly care about (except in a gossipy prurient way, heh), the private lives of the Spitzers. But we can still talk about the odds; and you and I both know that generally speaking, the spouse of someone who picks up prostitutes doesn't usually condone the behavior. No? Isn't your "we don't know what their private life is like" really just sweeping an important issue - perhaps the most important issue - under the rug?

Someone remarked that Silda delayed Elliot's resignation because she wanted him to retain his post; the implication being, I believe, that she loved power more than Elliot or something. Right now, I think that may very well be true. What else does she have from this man?

Yes, that is all just rampant speculation. Complete fiction, perhaps. Some intellectual exercises are like that, and that's o.k.

Experiments have been done with flies in which only the oldest were allowed to breed. The results? Those lineages lived increasingly longer. Why? Because breeding when you are older decreases the probability that you have genetic issues that will lead to your early demise, and you pass those good genes on to your offspring.

Because resentment can really set in, if your husband is out in the world feeling the cool breeze upon him and he waltzes in at night and you've been with the baby, there is perhaps a chill going both ways, because your worlds have become so different.

I'm a man, my wife is home with the kids, and I resent that depiction of what it's like to work outside of the home - "waltzes in at night". That tone puts me on edge immediately. I sit in a small office. Same office every day. Same shitheads babbling on about things I care nothing about. Same place to eat lunch. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.

My wife takes care of babbling kids, to be sure. But she has a whole (nice) house to occupy. She deals with a certain amount of scut work (as if that doesn't happen in an office), but she can drive around and focus her eyes on things that are far away sometimes. She has become detached from the work force, and is anxious about that; but she is able to be intimately involved in raising our children.

Is she "trapped"? Am I? I'd say no to both. No-one is trapped - people make choices. If I was younger I could easily pack my bags and move onward and upward. I could in fact choose to do that now, and I'm sure my career would benefit. But now I have a family, my kids have friends, a school, etc. I have in fact moved the family before, and it's not something I'd like to do to them too often. So I plod through one day after another - for them.

And then I "waltz home" and take ritalin so I can stand to hear my wife talk to me; because hearing about my own children is so terribly uninteresting after all the witty conversation at the office.

The revelation that Wolitzer "forgot" to have men in her novels at all for a while is telling. She grasps some of the anxieties that beset a certain class of women; but obviously lacks any kind of broad perspective. Of men or women. So when she says:

The men of my generation and older don't have these choices. Ever. They're the schleppers, just sort of going along. That's another novel, I suspect.

...I cringe again. Please spare us this book - a ninth grade school girl would be more qualified. Just sort of going along?! You mean the sacrifices I make for my family are unconscious and entirely outside of my control? FU. There are plenty of families that simply disintegrate, because one parent or the other just can't take the inanity anymore. And their kids suffer. I sit in my crap office with my nitwit coworkers quite intentionally - because I am not the most important person in my life right now.

Shlepper? Waltzing? Just sort of going along? Don't have choices? This is your view of fatherhood? And you plan to write a novel about this Meg? On second thought, please do. I'm sure it will receive a level of critical acclaim you never dreamed of.