I would be interested to know why it is that only infertile couples get the finger-wagging lecture about the number of children out there who need homes. Announcement of impending parenthood by those couples lucky enough to conceive naturally and easily never seem to be met by the comment, "Why did you decide to get pregnant when there are so many kids out there who need homes?"

Moreover, some of the posters make it sound as if adoption is easy. Like you can put yourself down on a list and pick up a child tomorrow. Unless you have several thousand dollars ($25,000 is the figure I've heard most often) lying around--and look like you will be model parents in every way--you're unlikely to be able to adopt.

What it comes down to is this: I get where the original letter writer is coming from. In the grand scheme of things, fertility and how it is doled out seems to me to be one of the most cruel tricks of nature. Couples who desperately want to be parents--and would likely be good parents--struggling with infertility while 14-year-olds get pregnant after the condom breaks does not seem to be "intelligent design."

This piece reminded me very much of an experience I had when I was traveling in the Czech Republic, a place I would eventually go on to live for several years. In 1993, customer service there was rudimentary, to say the least, and after losing my passport on New Year's Eve, I spent the better part of a day being sent across the city and back again trying to get a refund for the train tickets I wouldn't be able to use.

I was mad at myself for losing the passport, mad at whomever it was who grabbed the passport three seconds after I dropped it, mad at the American Embassy for not being open when I needed to get to Vienna, and especially mad at the woman at the train station who gave me wrong information and caused me to lose hours and hours running fruitlessly around Prague. On my last encounter with the woman, my traveling companion and I came up with the idea of buying her flowers. We figured that trying to end it on a good note would at least make *us* feel better. You know what? It did. She thought we were the craziest damn cizinci ever to cross her path, and we felt like we could leave the situation on a happier note.

Anne, I love your writing, even though I am not religious. Please keep coming to us.

While it's true that the guilt police out there are strongly in favor of breastfeeding, so much so that parents are made to feel as if they are actually abusing their babies by giving them formula, it is not true that society as a whole supports breastfeeding. One need only look at the non-existent guaranteed maternity leave to know that.

Breastfeeding, especially in the early months, is a full-time job in itself. Mother and baby sometimes need to be together every 2-3 hours, 24 hours a day. So what do we do to help new mothers get through this time? Absolutely nothing. They might get 6 weeks of maternity leave, 12 if they're lucky enough to work at a company covered by the Family Medical Leave Act. After that, they're still supposed to breastfeed, of course, because if they don't, they're terrible mothers, but they have to have the lion's share of their meaningful breastfeeding relationship with a machine, probably in a bathroom stall. Now that's bliss! And a breast pump is never going to be as efficient as a baby. Most women will see their supply drop the longer they have to pump instead of putting the baby to their breast. In the face of such challenges, many women simply do what they feel is inevitable and give up. Instead of helping these women to reach the challenging 1-year goal, we lambast them for failing to reach it, telling them that their children are much more likely to be obese and even stupider than breastfed babies.

I say all of this as a woman who breastfed her son for 15 months until he self-weaned. The ONLY reason I was able to do this was that I gave birth and spent the first year of his life in Europe, where breastfeeding (and parental leave) is truly supported.

I'm of two minds about this sign. On one hand, it is true that it's important to spread the message of breastfeeding's importance. On the other, it's almost like holding a hefty prize just out of reach--the message is only as good as society's ability to support its realization.