People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.'

Let's stop insulting each other and really get to know people. I mean, have a few beers and go on a fishing trip, and you will find a friend who won't see the world the way you do, but where you can have a really good conversation about it.

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

People who volunteer at the recycling center or soup kitchen through a church or neighborhood group can come to feel part of something 'larger.' Such a sense of belonging calls on a different part of a self than the market calls on. The market calls on our sense of self-interest. It focuses us on what we 'get.'

Just as the archetype of the supermom--the woman who can do it all--minimizes the real needs of women, so too the archetype of the"superkid" minimizes the real needs of children. It makes it all right to treat a young child as if he or she were older.

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.

To televisionize any serious problem, the program directors face the task of making the message 'go down smooth' until the audience is delivered to the commercial.