Doesn't it seem like the problem is Bill Keller? When he was writing a column, it was conservative, and now he is doing the conservatives' bidding. He seems like a nice enough guy, whatever that means, but it also seems like he wants to retard the Bushies' inevitable slide into oblivion and disgrace. Very bad! I don't read the Times at all anymore, and I used to read it religiously--it was my only religion! But about two years ago I started to look in vain for what I considered to be important stories, especially about Global Warming. So, read the Guardian and Salon and the Huffington Post and the New Yorker, and forget the Times.

You guys are so nice! I have Republicans in my family, too, and after the 2004 election, I simply stopped talking to them. When they come to me of their own accord and apologize for voting for Bush and putting an end to two hundred years of American democracy, maybe I will speak to them again. I have looked deep within and realized that if they can vote for Bush, I really and truly don't give a s**t about them.

When I was twenty, I was over six feet tall, I wore glasses, I was very smart and ambitious,and completely not sexy (no clothes sense and hated make-up). As a consequence, I've had an unorthodox marital history, but I'm here to tell you, the guys are out there and there's someone for everyone. You don't have to be dumb, but you do have to be fun, charming, good-natured, sexually generous, and independent. You have to be willing to make your own way and literally, to have a life, one that you enjoy. My twenty-seven year-old daughter has never had a problem finding a guy and having relaitonships, and all of her friends describe her as a "morally superior Know-it-all"--not, on the surface, an appealing quality. She thinks that you have to be honest the whole time and never put on a show, ever. She also thinks that you have to make peace with the idea that you might end up alone. We are both in good relationships. My 23-yr-old daughter is also smart and also has had no trouble finding relationships. Vocation, vocation vocation! But you also have to be flexible about whom these relationships are going to be with. My partner is a contractor. We haven't read the same things, but then he can fix or build anything. I could never date anyone in the competitive professions--men are in those professions (lawyering for example) for a reason--they want to feel superior. Stands to reason those guys are going to marry their secretaries.

Gosh, Harri, I am a writer. If I ever wrote anything as egregiously nasty as your review of this article, I would be worried. About karmic payback. May you be treated as generously as you treat others!

Well, let me speak as one of those left-overs from the 19th century. I started menstruating at 16 and a half and I was over six feet tall. My mother thought it was terrible--she took me to a doctor to have my growth plates xrayed, contemplated (ugh) surgery to shorten me (and I met a women in the gorcery stare a few years ago who had had her daughter do that very thing). But in fact, it has been great. I spent my adolescence reading books and riding horses, I wasn't interested in boys until I was in college, and I've been exceptionally healthy. I don't know about postponing menarche by artificial means, but I did read an article in the NY Times a few years ago that suggested that late puberty was an indicator of a long and healthy life. So keep those girls slender and active. Nothing wrong with missing out on high school romance.

Hey, Al--I read that article in Scientific American. It also said that there is some evidence that childcare smartens up men, too, and why wouldn't it? childcare is a challenge. But I digress.

I think the missing variable here is the motive for the choices women and men make. I have a friend who is in publishing and has worked hard now for thirty years. Her husband is in Public Relations. She used to say, "I have a career; he has a job." And it was true. She had a true vocation to be a book editor, he more or less needed to support the family (since there was more money in PR than in book publishing). Because she felt a true vocation, things organized themselves around her desires. It didn't matter where they came from or whether they were "selfish" or whatever. She was motivated to make it work and she did. It is ambivalence that is the problem, not choice.

After surveying the scene for thirty years, now, I think that true vocations are fairly rare. Most people, women and men, want to survive and reproduce. Most people do not have a driving desire to write music, paint pictures, start a company, etc. And so they will be worried about whether to stay home or have a job. If they had a true vocation, they wouldn't be worried about things outside their vocation. That's just the way it works. So, if you're worried about it, do the thing that seems right, conform to the highest norm of your society, and hope for the best. AS for Ms. Hekker, I thought her article was appealing and gracefully written, but not generalizable. She had a vocation;in the end, it didn't work out to her economic benefit. That might have happened no matter what her vocation was. At least she has five kids to give her a hand (which is what they should do).