Have you actually read all the letters? Relatively few have complained and many paint a picture of strong collaborative relationships. Marriage does not have to be a zero-sum game.

Why don't any of the women in the article just marry men who make less than they do, men who would prefer to stay at home and take care of the children?

Sounds like a solution - see Linda Hershman for more info.

You want to stop being a trailing spouse - start acting like a man.

My husband has been a trailing spouse since the year after we got married in 2000 and my daughter was born. The trailing spouse is often the spouse who picks up the main child care duties.

One suggestion not mentioned in this article: talk about the competing career issues BEFORE you get married!

My husband and I had the discussion about our different ambition levels (I'm fast-track; he is slow but steady) while we were dating and moving toward getting engaged.

Everything I predicted about our future lives (I have the career that has moved us from city to city; his career has slowly grown wherever we are; he is the primary caregiver during the summer while I work and kids are off school) has come true.

I'm lucky to have a spouse who has been on the same page with me since the first conversation years ago. Although my career takes center stage in our family, I am careful to support his career dreams and we take turns staying home when our kids are sick!

We keep the lines of communication open and support one another in words and action. That has kept our marriage and egos in check.

Daniel Buccino [says] "Until more men are willing to say 'You know, honey, you shouldn't have to change your name or sacrifice your career, and I'll stay home with our kids and aging parents,' progress will remain glacial,"

He's right. Because women will rarely do it themselves. It takes a very strong woman to ignore her mother, mother-in-law, and all her female friends and say, "I won't change my name and it will be the children's last name. I won't sacrifice my career to any greater extent than you do. You stay home with the kids or we'll hire someone or send them to daycare. Let's sit down with my and then your parents, and the respective siblings, to discuss how we can all share responsibility for their golden years, because it's not going to get dumped on me."

Most women spend their twenties and thirties treating themselves like garbage, terrified of being called selfish, smiling and rationalizing all the while. They are then surprised and bitter when nobody notices their "sacrifices" (which they themselves had described as choices) and they realize how unnecessary most of it was. It's bizarre and yet predictable.

in the next few months if his job offer goes through. Thanks to all who've posted here for great advice. At least as far as I can tell, about to take this step, the most important thing to do is be honest with one another. That's already done worlds of good for us in discussing this whole thing.

I trailed my husband overseas for his "career" in academia. I was totally derailed from my original profession and wound up working a variety of part-time jobs, while my husband went through a number of doctoral grants.

Guess what? After ten years of marriage, he abandoned me and our son for another woman three years ago. I was left in a foreign country, with no family support.

Now I'm not only a single mother, but after ten years abroad, I have no job contacts any more in the U.S. The past three years have involved enormous struggle in figuring out a way to earn an income that will cover living expenses for the two of us.

And my ex still hasn't finished his PhD. So he has no job prospects, no steady income, and, of course, pays no child support.

Trailing was the biggest mistake I've ever made, and I will never do it again. It requires a massive amount of trust, and you cannot tell in advance if your trust is misplaced. If trailing backfires on you, it will take years to recover.

Protect yourself and your children. Always do what is in YOUR and your children's best interests. Forget about relying on a spouse, who may or may not turn out to have your and the children's best interests at heart. No marriage comes with guarantees.

Your point about companies shying away from couples because it makes recruitment more difficult may be a problem in some cases. At my university it is sort of the opposite. If a terrific candidate were to have a spouse that would also fit within our dpt, we would see that as a bonus-a way to skip ahead in the hiring que. Also, we would see that we had a competitive advantage since we could also offer the spouse a position with a good career trajectory. So, it can work both ways.

As I have read these letters, I began thinking about how our expectations of work have changed during the past 100 years. We have clearly moved beyond money being the sole marker of career success. We now see job satisfaction as being an important goal. This is a relatively new phenomenon. My father's generation (my parents are children of the depression), saw work as a means to an end-supporting his family. If you liked your job, that was a bonus but not essential.

What I read here is that couples seem to be working together to maximize both money and satisfaction-a difficult strategy for one person, let alone two. It also makes calculating who takes the "hit" for the family a much more difficult equation.

In my family's case, my husband left a faculty position in CA so that I could begin my academic career. I got a decent paying assistant professor position and he got a substantial pay raise-but at a less prestigious university (so who sacrificed here?). We both hated the university, the people and TX. When a better university (and my husband's dream job) recruited me (same money for me, substantially less money for him), we both jumped at the chance to move. So, again it makes it difficult or impossible to calculate who got the better end of the stick. We are deliriously happy where we are. So, we both think we struck it rich.