Not to question CF's veracity in any way, but pardon me, doesn't that scene -- being carried into the doctor's office -- make you wonder? What year that could possibly have been, or in what country, that there was no wheelchair available? Oh, my aching back; but isn't "real" love wonderful?

My wife is going through chemotherapy. She has worked our entire marriage of twenty-eight years. I do the cleaning and laundry. We rarely have a traditional-style dinner at home. I've always felt that we have been equal partners in our marriage. When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, it was devestating to me. Caring for my wife during her chemotherapy helps me deal with her illness. I have to do something to ease her suffering. Standing by and doing nothing would be unthinkable. Only someone with no feelings for others at all would abandon their partner to deal with cancer on their own.

probably more like guilt.

But Lynn Harris is a treasure!

One of the things that struck me after reading the article about Caitlyn Flanagan is how she describes "working at the kitchen table" when her sons were young. If she was truly working (and writing takes a fair amount of concentration), how could she be doing right by her kids? What were they doing while she had her mind on her work? And what is so enriching for kids about being dragged around all day doing errands with their mother? Since it is a fact of life that mothers have things to do that are not particularly fun or stimulating for kids, whether it be work or driving around doing household errands, or cleaning house, isn't there a case to be made that kids would be happier in group care, where someone whose job it is to care for them is paying attention to them, reading them books, providing activities for them, and giving them a chance to play with other kids? This obsession so many women have right now with the idea that their children are never better off with anyone but them is, I think, detrimental to the kids. Learning to form other loving relationships, whether with adult teachers or other kids, is an important part of development. Consigning kids to be chained to their mothers all day has questionable benefit. The only person who benefits in this situation is the mother, who gets to carry around the belief that she is the only important person in her child's life. If that's not selfish, I don't know what is. And I can only hope the gerbil comment was a joke; if not, she's a sick, sick woman.

I'm no fan of Caitlin Flanagan (as a New Yorker subscriber), and I think her point of view doesn't hang together, as the article points out.

But the writer is bending over backwards to show stay-at-home motherhood as onerous and oppressive (with the story about her sister). Having tried it both ways, I can tell you that for me, being home with my kids is way more fun than going to work! My job was where I found things repetitive, disrespectful, and beneath human dignity. If your job is different, you are probably the boss.

About the nanny thing--just because you don't like to hear something doesn't make it false. Case in point: our next-door neighbors are a lesbian couple. The biological mother, who bore and nursed the child, is the one who works full time. The adoptive mother is the day-to-day caregiver. And the one the kids call Mom, the one the kids want when they're upset, scared, tired, what have you, is the adoptive mother. They are the first people to tell you that kids love the person who does their day-to-day care. And to flesh this out a little more, from my observer's stance, the biological mother is much more nurturing, warm, affectionate, and attentive when she is with them, so if anything, any differences in their personalities should cut the other way from reality.

And lastly, if you're not paying Social Security taxes for your child care provider, then yes, you are living a lie as a feminist. She deserves financial security as much as you do. If she is an illegal immigrant, then you should raise her wages accordingly.

That in typical Broadsheet fashion, you didn't read the book?

What a great job! Where can I get one?

It is one thing to be one of the fortunate folks who can afford to stay home, have a successful career as a writer, a full time nanny who looks after the kids, a housekeeper to do chores, and a "personal organizer" to organize her life. It is another thing to use that fortunate position as a pedestal from which to lecture women about the deepest personal choice they have to make in their lives -- how to raise their children. She's too facile, and ultimately hypocritical, pushing women towards choices with reprecussions that she herself was able to conveniently avoid through the liberal application of money, and selling it as bliss to women who aren't going to be able to so easily avoid the consequences.

I'm glad that someone has pulled the veil off of this motherhood poseur who cops the pleasures of life as a stay at home mom while refusing to accept its burdens. While certainly a large number of moms would choose to do that if they could, you can't do so and in the same breath claim any credibility as the media's poster child for the bliss of being a staying at home mom. The real tragedy is that women are buying the snake oil she's selling -- that there's only one choice to make when it comes to child-rearing, and that choice would be so easy if only us silly women would just give up any notion of being fulfilled outside the home. Flanagan plays to every mother's latent insecurities to sell books. No wonder she loves being a red-state darling -- she peddles insecurity and fear and folks lap it up and make her rich and famous doing it.

The truth is far messier and far more optimistic than Flanagan's pat answers, fearmongering and simpering smiles. Some women are blissful at home, some are not. Some women need to feel effective in the world to feel whole as a person, and who wouldn't rather have a whole mother raising a child than a half of one? Children bond with their mothers even when those mothers work, and why is it such a bad thing for a child to learn that he or she can bond with other caregivers in addition to their parents? Love isn't a finite resource or a zero-sum game. Love, in fact, has little to do with the petty fears and anxieties that Flanagan peddles in her work. And love is what family and children are really about and what they really need to survive and thrive.

I met a woman recently, a single mother who has a beautifully well-adjusted 13 year old son who is confident without being egotisitcal, loving without being hyperdramatic, responsible without being repressed. He loves his mom, and is already a delightful young man. As a new mother of a son, I asked her her secret. "Forget the experts and just love your child," was what she said. Words to live by if you ask me.