I am having trouble with the author lamenting about talented minds being wasted by not giving back to the larger society through work. Regardless of whether one is a working mother or a stay-at-home mother, there is a thing called volunteerism.

As a man who has worked full time for almost all my life, from delivery boy and generic office work as a young boy and a teen, to the Navy, to employee in the tech industry, to middle management in the banking industry who gave it all up, by choice to be a full time stay home dad, I can say I can think of NOTHING more rewarding than fulfilling my birthright as a human being of raising my child from infancy to competent independent adulthood.

The fact that this endeavor is held in such low esteem is one of the major symptoms of the cultural collapse we are currently in.

Perhaps the author would do well to question why her friends' apparent lack of drive bothered her?

Also the whole premise is faulty based as it is on the ten year time frame. Why not ask anyone in any job why they seem less driven after they stick around when their job is completed? After all, if your kids are full time students, and you spend the majority of your time sitting around an empty house, you are no longer a full time parent, you are now a housekeeper. And that is a completely separate issue from 'mommy wars'.

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.

What a self-rightous, pompous, moron this author makes herself out to be. She's rehashing the same stereotypes we keep hearing about how 1) SAHMS never use their brains 2) jobs are SO INCREDIBLY INTERESTING AND EXCITING.

Please. Sure, there are probably plenty of moron SAHMs who can't possibly think of a way to use their time, and need some project manager/program director to tell them what to do. But if you're smart and motivated it's really not hard to find a million ways to use your intelligence and experience in your community (particularly now that most communities have tightened their belts to the point where volunteer labor is what runs the schools, libraries, and town halls). I've worked in a variety of fields, and never had the opportunities to use my brain in the ways I do now that I'm involved with a number of volunteer organizations.

And please tell me why a day at the office is so much more interesting than a day at home with the kids? Because I must say that's not something I've ever really understood. Is there anything less interesting than listening to an anecdote about cubicle life?

Wolitzer is not saying that people with jobs are necessarily more interesting than those without. The book feels very real to me. I think it's a great interview.

Her and Rebecca's protestations to the contrary, Switzerland she is not. Wolitzer's commentary is a polemic against choosing to quit work and raise children.

Everybody has different circumstances, and I wouldn't dream of imposing my view on anyone else. That's what feminism is, contrary to the misguided and militant version that requires women to choose only the "acceptable" version of pursuing a career while the children are young.

But there are a few things I'd like to point out to Wolitzer:

1. SAHMs are not a monolith. I've met some doozies who overinvest in birthday parties and PTA, to the detriment of their children. But then again, I've met many career moms of the same description. I spent most of my kids' preschool years investigating and learning--about science, language, art, technology--at the library, museums, and in nature.

2. There is a natural break when the youngest goes to school. Then a lot of women get part-time work, often in the field of their training. But we remain available for in-school plays and book fairs, and we are not exhausted most of the time.

3. I wonder how it is more valuable to invest in the next generation via a paid job in health care, education, or any other service industry than it is to do the exact same work but at home or school with one's own children and without pay. It makes me think that the pay is the key. Is Wolitzer saying that people who earn more money are more valuable?

Many of us have had to reinvent ourselves as our children's dependence on us has waned and, unlike a paid daycare center, not been replaced by a fresh source of needy babies and kids. But reinventing the self is not limited to mothers who've chosen to eschew material security and the esteem of feminists like Wolitzer; indeed reinvention of some sort or another seems to be a common theme among all the middle agers I know.

Wolitzer can write about whatever she likes. I am skeptical, though, of anyone who claims to "tell the truth about women's lives." Which truth? Which women?