Methinks Kate O'Beirne is, to a certain extent, padding her wallet with clever marketing. In the world of punditry, going against type pays. You can find about a zillion women who'll speak and write in favor of feminism, and the same goes for African-Americans arguing in favor of civil rights, union members in favor of labor protections, energy executives in favor of oil-drilling breaks, etc. But when you find a tart-tongued woman who'll attack feminism or someone else who'll speak out against his/her self-interest, now that will get some attention.

I'm not saying O'Beirne is insincere. But I'm sure she exaggerates, to her own self-promoting benefit.

Sadly, though, a few self-described liberals -- such as a few who post regularly in Salon's letters section -- conform to her caricature of motherhood-haters. It's a tiny minority, but those who denigrate mothers and children, besides being short-sighted (what kind of future does any society have if that society exiles mothers and children to its fringes?), make it easier for conservatives to argue that liberals are anti-family.

Two upper class women with opposing political views...so what else is new? Unlike the two of them, the vast majority of American women do not have 90 minute lunches nor time to contemplate the advance of women in this century or the previous one. They have few choices about working because the U.S. economy can no longer support one income families. Spouses, male or female, MUST work.

Does absentee parenting contribute to stable families...probably not. And, if that is true, who is to say that single moms threaten society any more than the two income family.

More than anything, this interesting interview is a poignant reminder of America's march toward a hard core class society and the disconnect between those classes.

O'Beirne said "Why don't we, given the choices women make -- and we have a pretty good idea 30 years later how that's shaking out -- subsidize the ones who are electing to stay home?"

Is she actually advocating PAYING women to stay home with their kids? Isn't that like (gasp) welfare? Isn't that what the Republicans always rail against?

Just curious.

Let's do some simple math with working women in the ancient world.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that the conclusions of Elizabeth Wayland Barber's book Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years are correct, and women have been working outside the home supplying their communities with textiles up until new metallurgy technology (creating stronger swords and shackles) made large scale slave labor physically possible around about 500 B.C.E. or so. (Give or take a century or so, I'm making ballpark estimates here.)

If we assume that the average person has about 50 maternal ancestors per 1000 years, then in the last 20,000 years, O'Beirne has accrued about 1000 direct maternal ancestors contributing to her mDNA, the genetic material passed through the mother only.

Suppose we set the beginning of the "stay at home" lifestyle for women in ancient Athens around 500 B.C.E., which is about when this lifestyle was first described in writing as a new feminine ideal.

And suppose we assume that over the last 2500 years, about half of O'Beirne's ancestors enjoyed enough urban affluence to realize this new ideal of womanhood.

So that means only about 63 of her direct maternal ancestors lived in the way O'Beirne believes in natural and proper for a woman.

The other 937 of the women who contributed to her mDNA would have considered the stay at home lifestyle either out of their reach economically, or a self indulgence that threatened to leave the village naked.

If she doesn't believe in DNA, then let's go to the Bible. Where does she think Joesph got his coat of many colors? At KMART?

Women's Work: the First 20,000 Years made me think completely differently about the past. It's a fascinating read, and it's all sound anthropology and science.

O'Beirne should think seriously about how to honor the ancient women who kept their tribes clothed and helped nurture technology and civilization and made HER life today possible.

Fully half of this interview assumes that children just drop out of the sky and into our spare bedrooms, completely involuntarily.

Childrearing is a choice. People choose to have children. They do not just magically appear in the nursery when we're a certain age. Since women are the bearers, women are the primary decisionmakers about family size. Women do not consult their employers before choosing to have children, and their employers are not responsible for subsidizing what employees choose to do with their personal time.

I can only imagine the look on my boss' face when I go ask her if I can work half-time for the same pay, benefits, and promotion track, so I can spend the other half of my time scuba diving. Or when I tell her that because I love having scuba diving so close, my employer must build a giant scuba tank on the property, so I and the other scuba enthusiasts can visit it during lunch. I'd like to see what the IRS says when I say I'm deducting several thousand dollars in personal scuba diving expenses this year, as part of the Allowed kaff Scuba Diving Credit. Yeah. Dream on. Personal. Lifestyle. Choice.

If you want to make more than 72 cents on the dollar, then make the personal choice not to have children. Your employer is not responsible for your choice to bloat the world's population. Neither your employer nor your fellow taxpayers should be forced to make certain that you don't have to suffer the consequences of your own personal lifestyle choices.

I had such an emotional reaction to this interview. As did many others by the amount of letters that have been posted. I am struck by the inability of Americans to have conversations with each other rather than arguments. A conversation entails really listening to each other and also answering the quesions asked. From the first question, O'Bierne did not give an answer. I am left wondering: what were her career path and experiences? And, does she not listen well and so could not answer the question? Or was she avoiding answering the question? I'll never know. And she missed an opportunity to help me understand her and her point of view.

I am 38 years old and very thankful for the feminist movement. I have had so much more opportunity and earning potential and freedom than my mother and women before her. Every day I am thankful to previous generations of women, and the men who supported them, for all my freedoms from the right to vote, to safe and effective birth control, to my access to education (I have an MBA from a top business school), to my career experience in corporate America. Every day I feel lucky to have been born a woman in the United States. A place where I can move freely as a woman, enjoy my feminity, and have every opportunity available to me.

Fortunately, I have a mother and aunts who shared stories with me of their lives. So I am aware of what life was like for women before 2006. And I am thankful for all the gains in women's rights in the United States. I am thankful to the women who fought for these gains and to the men who supported them. This movement was not a movement just of women, but of supportive men as well. If this was kept in mind, there may be less division in this country around this issue.