Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden.

For many of us, work is the one place where we feel appreciated. The things that we long to experience at home - pride in our accomplishments, laughter and fun, relationships that aren't complex - we sometimes experience most often in the office. Bosses applaud us when we do a good job. Co-workers become a kind of family we feel we fit into.

Here is a new car, a new iPhone. We buy. We discard. We buy again. In recent years, we've been doing it faster.

The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us.

Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?

Many working families are both prisoners and architects of the time bind in which they find themselves.

Most women work one shift at the office or factory and a 'second shift' at home.