Perhaps daycare has this effect on some kids. I think a lot of us who have used daycare might even agree that those parents who drop their very young kids off at 7 am and pick them up at 7 p.m. (I know parents who have done this) may not be parenting their kids enough for whatever reasons they have. A lot of working parents will probably agree that this is extreme. Where I live workings moms AND dads do seem to accomodate their schedules to be around their children as much as possible.

But what I want to see is the study that compares these daycare kids, even the ones who spend all their daylight hours there, with children of large families. Don't other children absorb a stay at home mom's attention as much as or more than a paying job does in a smaller familiy? I can't tell which students at my daughter's school were in daycare, but I have noticed that the ones from large families seem to be a little more wild and more apt to be missing homework and library books.

Wasn't it Germany that sentenced the man who stabbed Monica Seles's stabber to probation? This reminds me of the wierd 'open-mindedness' you see in old 70's movies about rapists and women killers. Also in Ann Rule's true crime books. Like it was the fashion to understand and coddle violent criminals, especially when their victims were women.

Conservative cultures with liberal enclaves can spawn some really wierd hybrids of liberal women haters. The fact that the judge is a woman doesn't really mitigate her hateful attitude.

I am elated that a woman may be president during my lifetime, and I would be a fool to deny it. But I'm not voting for her'genitalia'. I will be voting for her pragmatism, which others call lack of vision. You know who has loads of vision? George W. Bush. Clinton is hardly a war-mongerer- she voted for the authorization at a time when many in congress did the same. So she hasn't groveled enough for some- groveling is easy. She's being honest. In those circumstances, she made the vote she thought was prudent. Politics is about compromise and consensus, not conscience and dreams.

In 2008 we don't need someone inspirational. We need someone who can lead this country out of this war before it ruins our economy, our military and our power. I trust Clinton can do it- I don't trust a freshamn senator, and I don't think either Obama or Edwards have the connections and power that Clinton and her husband have. I'd rather have an effective Clinton getting some of what I want than 'visionaries' failing utterly.

American housewives of the the last generations of the 20th century or so were historical anamolies. They had relatively fewer children than women from previous generations, access to birth control, and most of them were moving away from being farm wives and producing all of the family's cloth, clothing, soap, candles, canned goods, etc. Not to mention they cooked and cleaned with electricity and didn't have to slaughter their own meat. In addition, most of them didn't have outside jobs. Perhaps they were the first women in history who didn't contribute financially to their families. Plus, childrearing was still based on the model of huge families and short childhoods- kids were largely left alone past a certain age. So in that respect, for a brief time for some women, life was pretty easy.

Now women have even fewer children, and even fewer homemaking tasks beyond basic cleaning and preparing food that has been made very simple to prepare. Now we focus our attentions more on the kids, whether or not we work. I'm convinced that this is because we have more time for them. Even working moms have more time than housewives with 10 kids used to. I don't think this is bad. Perhaps children have fewer chores, but we ALL have fewer chores. And the anxiety people feel about a 'dangerous world' is only harmful because of the anxiety itself, not because the world is more dangerous here in the US. Remember, your children are far more likely to be injured and killed when you drive them to school than by walking by themsleves or playing outside in the neighborhood.

Instead of falling into the thought trap of 'what's the matter with kids today', why don't we all rejoice that our children are growing up in peaceful and safe places with lots of enriching activities available to them?

Whenever the topic of female soldiers getting raped and harrassed by their fellow soldiers is brought up, inevitably a certain type of man says they have nothing to complain about because they dared to enter the sacred Male Domain of War. Well, radical misled feminists or not, they are over there and their armchair warrior critics aren't. For that fact alone, they deserve everyone's respect. It's not any less brave to volunteer to go to that hellhole if you're a female.

The idea that a war zone is some place for males only, where women tread at there own risk is preposterous. There have always been women in war zones. Remember that prostitutes are actual human beings, and there are even female Iraquis. If male soldiers have the notion that since they are far from prosecutors and rape kits then anything goes, then they are bringing shame on all of us. Because they weren't called on it before makes it no less shameful now. We want to think of our military as heroes, but hearing tales of so many male soldiers acting like the worst type of thug makes it very, very hard to respect and honor them.