I would never say (and did not) that only nature governs human behavior. But sex hormones play an enormous and maybe exclusive role in our initial attachment to children. Women's attachment is somewhat stronger than men's due to their greater production of the three hormones I referred to. (That is one reason a woman's refusal to tell a man about his child is so reprehensible; she deprives him of this biological bonding.) Of course none of this is true in all cases. Individuals vary.

Somehow you got the idea that this has something to do with housework. It doesn't as far as I can tell.

As to social conditioning, feminists have a weird way of speaking and writing that suggests that society in some way proceeds without women, that they are passive observers of daily life. They aren't. Whatever society is at any given time is roughly half the responsibility of women. So if women are socialized partly toward childrearing, that is partly their doing. Given the biological connection women have to their children, that's not surprising or bad.

O'Beirne nowhere argues that women should "just give up the fight, give in to tradition and inertia." On the contrary, she is all for women working who want to work and for them receiving equal pay and benefits when they do. What she opposes is the notion that work outside the home should be the only legitimate choice a woman can make. Many women have to work, but for those who don't (like O'Beirne and of course Betty Friedan), other options should be respected, and feminists often act like they don't.

I think Rebecca Traister did an admirable job on a very, very difficult interview. The relative difference in stature between the reviewer and the reviewed, as well as the format chosen, made this interview no easy task.

By its end, I think Traister's interview manages to paint a clear picture of O'Beirne's role as a smooth-talking social-darwinist who seems all too ready to fall back on the excuse of her publisher's interests when pressed to defend the more "controversial" aspects of her book.

<<>>men go to jail for fraud, so can women. of should there be two standards, one for nasty brutish man and one for angelic holy woman?>>

Legally, fraud has to include monetary loss. DNA testing is usually done at a child support hearing BEFORE any payment, so if it ends up being someone else's child, there hasn't been financial loss yet. If the husband did pay child support and it was later proven it wasn't his child, sure he could sue for repayment. But if your wife lied to you and slept with another man, no she wouldn't be jailed for that alone, nor would a man.>>

So men do not contribute money during marriage? That's rich.

I had to laugh when Kate O'Beirne insisted she would have been a lawyer without feminism. Conveniently, she's ignored the fact that law schools had quotas that limited women to a tiny percentage of the class--if they allowed them at all. My mother graduated from law school in the 50s. She was one of five women in her class--and that was at infamously "liberal" Berkeley. She then went on dozens of interviews to get a job--most firms were willing to hire her as only a legal secretary or a librarian.

It's interesting to note that conservative Queen bees like O'Beirne (and Phyllis Schafly and Laura Ingraham)all took advantage of the hard spade work feminists did to abolish these quotas to obtain the prestige law degrees confer. None of them went to law school before feminism opened the legal doors to more than a tiny segment of women.

It's also interesting to note that Republican women, such as Sandra Day O'Connor and Elizabeth Dole, who did go to law school under the quota system, have never taken the vituperative, misogynistic attitude toward women's rights that someone like O'Beirne does.

As for Traister getting bulldozed--well, yeah, that's clearly O'Beirne's shtick. But since Traister had the advantage of being able to look up information and facts after the interview, why on earth did she type this up as a Q and A. O'Beirne clearly lied and skewed facts to serve her agenda, why didn't Traister point out these out? Surely, that's her job as a print journalist? I mean, who cares if she was a punching bag during the interview?

Why is Salon giving publicity to anti-feminist extremists? Can't you leave the reactionary drum-beating to Regenery Press?

What's next, a talk with the KKK? A warm first-person potrayal of a violent skinhead? A "fair and balanced" look at clinic bombings?

I commend Salon for highlighting a book, presumably as a warning, so that I will be able to stear clear of it. I think that it should be evident to anyone that a woman who is in the midst of a high-level career who writes that feminists are wrong to want high-level careers, has a major problem with logic. Frankly, to be really petty, it sounds to me like a case of jealousy about women who have even a higher level career going that she does. The whole book just sounds like so much red meat for the neocons and I don't need to inflict that on myself.

Granted I live in NYC, but the choice to be a Stay at Home Dad seems perfectly normal and acceptable here. In fact the vast majority of people, including my wife, seem to think it's great!

Of course there are a few others who frown on it too. But it is definitely a generational gap thing. Which is why I can't wait for Baby Boomers to get the heck out of this debate. Move on, your kids are all growed up! When is it going to be our turn?

Curiously I agreed with so much that she had to say early on in the article. There is almost a right meets left point where the views connect. She's right about the wage gap. She's right that most women by nature choose to stay home. She even got me--I'm a genuine starving artist slash at home dad.

But the idea that all of this validates traditional gender roles is where she goes right off the cliff. She connects two dots without any evidence at all. She even admits that some women are naturally high powered. So why are there no exceptions or choices for men? And given how much social norms have changed historically, is that idea of men staying home really so radical?

The world I live in doesn't seem to think so.