Truer words were never said...the real issue isn't that women shoose to work at soul-deadening jobs, it is that we haven't figured out a way to distribute the soul-deadening jobs about society equally so that more people could enjoy the fruits of their labor (which should be time to spend in the park with your kids, doing socially relevant work and so forth).

None to five work days are awful and a waste of most people's time.

The rich can work and have kids. The rest of us our servants with kids. Really still only two classes. The upper and the lower.

Yes that about sums it up. If your personally fulfilling and socially relevant and/or creative career didn't quite work out, and you have a job that you actually like, that doesn't crush your soul, where your bosses aren't a bunch of A-holes, and that pays you enough scratch to keep hearth and home together and maybe pursue some interests as well, then damn, you're pretty much skating through life.

PJ O'Rourke, who despite his politics comes up with a good line from time to time, recounts his father telling him, "PJ, find something you love to do and you will never work a day in your life." Which PJ thought was odd, seeing as how his father spent 30 years going to the same factory job day after day.

Frankly, for the vast majority of American women the choice between going to work and staying home is not a choice at all. If people have to work to feed their family then they are going to go to work, end of story. If they have the financial security to stay home and raise their family then good for them, but we're talking about such a small group of people in that case that it hardly merits the national attention that this issue has received. I can't think of two groups less representative of mainstream American society than Ivy League educated mothers who choose to stay home and raise their kids and the women who identify with the characters in Sex and The City. This entire "controversy" has been ginned up by a narcissistic navel gazing subculture whose self absorption has convinced them that the concerns that they and their privileged peers share are somehow relevant to the lives of normal people.

I happen to have a job that I enjoy and that pays pretty well, but still much of my day is spent in soul-sucking meetings or doing trivial, boring, repetitive tasks. (Which is why I am reading Salon right now) I guess that is why it's called "work," right? I'm glad that others are annoyed by the way some describe the "selfish" choice we women are making to go to our glamorous, fabulous jobs. I sometimes painfully envy my kid's teachers who get to spend the day with sweet little three-year-olds, rather than boring (or worse) co-workers. Then I think about being in charge of a room full of three-year-olds and remember that that is REALLY work.

Where exact financial reward social relevant job be?

Believe or no, use for work Svutlana as forecast diva for extreme big drugged company where make me extreme many kahpies of production and finance forecasts. Forecast diva is complete social irrelevant, but extreme financial reward job!

Also work Svutlana as volunteer board member at women's shelter. Executive Director have extreme social relevant feminist job. But little financial reward. Make much more money Svutlana who make many kahpies than Executive Director who try for save many lives.

Make feel me extreme guilty this, but have absolute no idea what for do about, so quit job for write about sex.

I think the beginning of the ink on the subject starts a generation (or two) earlier with Barbara Kerr's "Smart Girls, Gifted Women" on women who were smart-tracked as girls, made it into a prestigious college, and the choices they made afterward.

But what's interesting to me about the mommy wars is the idea that it's the mommy side of the equation that's broken. My personal suspicion is that more company men need to take significant breaks and look at new options for careers in order to be healthier human beings. Perhaps if we were arguing for a new definition of work instead of whether it's more feminist to adapt to a hierarchical corporate system or to choose families and nurture, the argument would sound less false.

Thanks for saying exactly what I have wanted to say. I can't ever find the words because I get so annoyed. The words "mommy wars" flip off a switch in my brain.

I think of my parents whenever I read about the Mommy wars... public servants, a nurse and a police officer. Ever since I can remember, their jobs have required odd shifts (I recall getting up at 4 am at the age of 6 to trudge down the street in the winter to a baby sitter.) I and my sister didn't raise myself, but as a young teenager I was quite used to being home without parents. My parents' jobs do not pay well, and recieve no acclaim. My mother was thrilled when "Scrubs" came out because it showed the reality of being a nurse... twelve hour shifts into the middle of the night, on your feet all day with doctors who make it very obvious they are better than you.

I know that my parents chose their jobs because they were called to them. They went into their jobs with the expectation that they would enjoy them, but years and years of low paying, low acclaim work, and odd hours have bruised their enthusasism.

Do my parents complain? No. Why? Because they have done such a tremendous job penny-pinching and pushing through the day to day that they can send both of their daughters to school with some financial help, and take us on vacations to Mexico, Hawaii, and all over the Rockies.

You can't always love your job. Who in the world loves their life all the time in every avenue? Even going into a field that interests you might not yield satisfactory results. But you don't have to carry that cynicism into other places. When my parents come home, they come HOME. They leave their jobs behind. They use the money from the soul-sucking to experience soul-reviving.

I know it's trendy for the next generation to scoff at their elders. But I have a lot of respect for my parents, and the constant bickering over the Mommy wars threatens to erase what my parents instilled in me: a strong work ethic and a positive attitude goes a long way.