I've read somewhere that the birth rate in 2008 exceeded all others in American history. For the record, most of those were probably conceived before the economic downturn began in the fall of 2007. There appears to me no clear and present danger to the survival of the human species, to our political liberty, and even to life on this planet as we have known it than the unbridled reproductive power of humanity. The number of species pushed over the brink of extinction annually is in direct proportion to the destruction of habitat for the support of more and more humans. By depleting non-renewable resources such as coal, petroleum, and certain metal ores, we are making the very stuff of industrial, technological civilization unavailable to future generations.

I once saw a mathematical projection that we could reduce our population to a tenth of its present value in about 230 years if we adopted a non-draconian limit of two children per couple. This kind of transformation will only be possible in a society in which people do not have to depend directly on family members for their feeding and care when incapacitated through disease and age. The struggle against poverty through higher wages, universal medical insurance, and pensions are all part-and-parcel of our efforts to establish an ecologically sustainable economy, be able to enjoy the wild places of the Earth, and secure the opportunity of every species to continue as long as nature allows.

This is great stuff.

I am sure that this will be threatening to some individuals, stay at home mother types who never leave their children in anyone else's care (resulting in shy introverted babies clinging to their mothers' hips?), who homeschool rather than expose their children to any other ways of being or believing, who ridiculously, repeatedly accuse working mothers of leaving it up to strangers to "raise" their children.

But this is how I was raised and how I am raising my kids and I think that we are all better for it. It explains my internal resistance against the idea of relocating away from my family, and my reluctant willingness to relocate ONLY to the city where my in-laws live, so that some familial support will be in place.

And here I was thinking that this is why SAHM-hood works, and why homeschooling works, because the women who do it are so interdependent. We lean on each other for everything from outgrown clothes to schoolbooks to toys to free babysitting to actual, formal classes in subjects we ourselves would rather not teach. We refer each other to things; if you are any kind of freelance educator, good word of mouth from the homeschooling community is money in your pocket.

We are eachother's most important resource. I can't think how often I've relied on other women, to the point where I consider my life as it is impossible without them, and I can't count the number of times that someone else's child has fallen asleep in my arms.

I've always thought the nuclear family was a mistake, a sociological screw-up we still haven't recovered from. I've always thought the idea that a woman should be able to move across a continent from her mother, sisters and friends at the whim of her husband's employer, and then be a functional mother, to be insane.

I've also thought that by ignoring the feminine or asking women to reject it, we've ignored and rejected an enormously important aspect of human experience, and I'm glad to see scientists starting to look at human historyfrom a female point of view. The notion that human societies develop only in response to male experience is dangerously wrong-headed.

But no. We SAHMs and homeschoolers all isolationist nutcases whose children are clingy, neurotic wrecks. Silly me!

Okay, I was joking about the extreme elements of neurotic mothering, but if I knew you personally, I probably would love to have a mom like you in my own network.

There was no K-Mart or Target in ancient times. Any clothing people wore was manufactured by hand. No woman can manage the job of spinning and weaving for her family by herself, especially not while taking care of children.

There are friezes from ancient Egypt showing clearly the Bronze Age version of company-run day care for weavers and spinners.

Conservatives get their ideals about "natural" womanhood from Hellenistic Athens, where women didn't work outside the home at weaving or spinning because the textile industry had been turned over to slave labor by then.

The SAHM did not exist in Western culture until after the textile industry was taken over by slave labor.

Hellenistic Athens is the first society to support the idea of a mother staying inside the house and doing nothing but taking care of children and preparing meals.

The SAHM first became economically feasible in Western culture thanks to advances in weapons technology that allowed wars to become much bigger and result in the taking of thousands rather than hundreds of slaves.

Prior to that, women had to work together at the looms all day just to keep their families in linens and clothing.

It was hard work and women did it for thousands of years before the industry switched over to male-run factories staffed by slaves.

Those women in the Bible by the way -- they didn't shop at K-Mart. They all worked outside the home too, and they had on the job child care.

Strange as it may seem to you, most SAHMs are working. They're either making from scratch things their families use, or they're in some kind of cottage industry. Many also contribute to family businesses, sometimes as labor and sometimes as bookkeepers. None of the ones I know shop at K-Mart or WalMart unless they're buying something they absolutely cannot get from any other source.

It's working moms who go there, for the most part anyway. They're the ones who have the money and need the convenience.

Why do you think we trade off goods and services in the way we do? Seriously? Do you honestly think the homeschooling wives of average wage-earners spend that much time at K-Mart?

I do not know why anyone would mention the Bible in response to me. I didn't mention it at all. Being a homeschooler doesn't make me a fundamentalist Christian. It did, however, make me a history teacher for a while, as I put a good deal of time into ancient history when I was in college.

Strange as it may seem, I had a college education, at two excellent, secular schools. Anyway...

Not all cultures relied so heavily on textiles that women did little else. Some people wore animal skins. Some wore nothing or close to it, and used materials that did not require threaded looms. Some cultures used textiles sparingly, or imported most of them. Some had weavers, in the same sense that they had potters or smiths. The work became specialized and was delegated rather than done in each household. Those that depended heavily on textiles or exported them frequently depended on slave labor to produce them, instead of or in addition to wives. Some cultures depended on men for fabric. Not all cultures considered weaving to be exclusively women's work.

Including, ironically, Egypt. Women did much of the weaving in ancient Egypt, but single-heddle looms were the province of Egyptian men.

It also hasn't always taken up every minute of women's time, especially as looms themselves improved. To provide some perspective, in Madagascar, for a while, women were not only able to weave enough for their families, they created surpluses of woven goods and undercut the prices of the mills.

Women's work has varied from time to time and from place to place depending on what was needed, whether weaving fabric, making fishing nets, gardening, trapping, food preservation, anything. It's remarkably flexible. "Unemployed" women continue to turn their hands to all kinds of things. The extent to which women's work contributes to the family's bottom line is reflected in how much of a status symbol an idle wife has been at various times and in various places. Only a rich man could afford to delegate his wife's labor.

Seriously, anyone who thinks that a SAHM does nothing but cook and play with the kids needs...I don't know...something. Something corrective. I don't know what it would take, though. I think the idea of SAHMs, especially homeschooling moms, as stupid, parochial, lazy and parasitic is so entrenched that even spending a day doing their work would be dismissed as "not really a normal day."

Women's work varies. What does not seem to vary much is the impulse to do the work communally, especially when young children are involved. It makes it more efficient and easier, not to mention safer. It's can be much saner to take on another women's children while she takes on some task of yours, or vice versa. Even letting the kids play together while you work on something is often more effective than doing it separately, as the kids both entertain and distract each other in ways that don't work well with just siblings.

We may not be weaving every stitch of clothing our families use, but that doesn't mean we're useless or idle.

The bottom line is that somebody has to do the work. If Mom's working, then it's delegated to other people, frequently other women: day care workers, teachers, school administrators, people who work in the factories that produce pre-packaged foods, nannies, restaurant staff, the people who work at WalMart, the cleaning lady, the people who make the goods sold at WalMart, and so on down the line.

A homeschooling SAHM cuts out a lot of these middle-(wo)men, and if she does it well, she can do as much for the family's standard of living as a mother who works full-time. It's not something every woman can or should do, but aren't we at the point yet where we can decide to be a working mother without rejecting as lazy people who make the opposite choice? Because working or not working doesn't change a thing. All it does is allocate the labor differently. A working mother doesn't eliminate the need for household goods, clothing, food, cleaning, cooking, childcare and education. She delegates.

The work itself still has to get done, and not working and delegating is still the privilege of the rich.

Your name, by the way, is ironic in this situation, as you seem determined to silence, via condescension and stereotyping, female voices that have different experiences from your own.