Shame on you, Heather, for stereotyping all childless people for the selfish lump you were, pre-child.

This is really, really pathetic cliche. You come across as the most self-absorbed person in the world, post-child. And to denigrate people who don't ahve children for whatever reason -- you should really be ashamed of yourself.

Childless people do not sit around doing margarita shots -- don't stereotype people who did not/could not have children for a huge range of reasons to the person you once were.

When is Salon going to show a bit of the other side?

Wall Street has been immune from criticism lately because it's performed so well, and many middle-class Americans have benefitted from that fact.

The down payment for my first home was only made possible by the stock market surge of the late 1990s. It would have taken me 25 years to accumulate 50K in a low-interest savings account. My disabled Dad was woefully underfunded for retirement when he stopped working in his late fifties. Thanks to the market, his estate had about doubled by the time of his death less than a decade later, saving my mother from extreme poverty.

We tend not to ask questions when the market surges ten to twenty percent a year. But we can read the prospectuses, ask questions of our broker and employer retirement plan manager -- is this guaranteed? They will tell you no, so will the fine print of any prospectus, which also must reveal the kinds of investments any mutual fund holds. Buyer beware.

If American politicians didn't so strongly identify their family status with their worthiness, they wouldn't appear so fraudulent when they are caught out.

European leaders don't flaunt their families anywhere near to the extent that American ones do; they divorce, they have mistresses, they argue that their personal lives have little to do with their leadership ability.

Maybe if Americans weren't so suspicious of anyone living outside of the nuclear family ideal, our politicians wouldn't have to puff up their family status only to have it deflated.

If brides paid for all the bridesmaids' expenses, then we'd see the bridesmaid circus whither away. When I got married I purposefully didn't have bridesmaids out of a wish not to inconvenience my friends or sisters. All were financially stressed and preoccupied with new families, saving for down payments, pregnancy, funding an entry-level urban high-cost life, or had moved cross-country. All had a much better time for simply attending and enjoying the party, without having to do any more than offer a token gift (and most of my husband's friends didn't even do that!) Weddings are a big stressor for the bride, no need to spread the panic.

And above all -- the bride and groom are lucky to have found each other. No need to gloat over one's good fortune and demand tributes.

That my older male (Wall Street) colleagues were lying when they told me their wives hadn't slept with them in years -- hence, the lunch time tittie bars, the exotic massages they put on the expense accounts. Then my girlfriends started having children, and told me they'd completely lost interest in sex, nope, not since Jr. was conceived 21 months ago. Thank God for the Internet. Many women refuse to understand that their husbands like sex and think it part of marriage.

All the points Amy Richards makes are valid, but she doesn't seem to understand how hard it is for businesses -- even large ones --to grant benefits like lengthy paid parental leaves.

Jobs are outsourced internationally because American employers can't stay competitive while offering all employees such generous benefits. The lower level customer service jobs are the ones easiest outsourced, and they are the first to go.

And as the author stated, if parents get lengthy paid leaves, then non-parent employees have every right to ask for the same for other pressing life needs.

The fact that Richards says she was shocked that so many women she interviewed couldn't afford unpaid leave itself shows how far removed she is from the realities of most working women's lives. Even upper level management women at the financial companies I've worked for didn't take unpaid leave --they might have a six week paid disability leave after giving birth, then tack on accumulated vacation time. In the pricey New York metropolitan area, and often being the main family breadwinner, they didn't have the luxury of the six-month unpaid leave they were technically entitled to.

In the U.K. lengthy paid leaves are mandated; the result is often that employers avoid hiring women of childbearing age.

None of the Mom books addressing work/life issues seem to take the realities of the business world into account. Perhaps because they are disproportionately penned by women who've worked only in journalism or academia, neither of whose paramaters are remotedly comparable to the rest of the working world's.

Smith's description of Senegal International airport "a five to one scoundrel to passenger ratio" -- reminds me of living in pre-gentrified Brooklyn.