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

Many of the young aspire to happy marriages and dot-com fortunes but end up in guarded love and okay-for-now jobs.

Paradoxically, those who call for family values also tout the wonders of an unregulated market without observing the subtle cultural links between the family they seek to regulate and the market they hold free.

Each marriage bears the footprints of economic and cultural trends which originate far outside marriage.

The "female culture" has shifted more rapidly than the "male culture"; the image of the go-get 'em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let's take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men's underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women's feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.

Compared with the employed, the jobless are less likely to vote, volunteer, see friends and talk to family. Even on weekends, the jobless spend more time alone than those with jobs.

As motherhood as a "private enterprise" declines and more mothers rely on the work of lower-paid specialists, the value accorded the work of mothering (not the value of children) has declined for women, making it all the harder for men to take it up.