There are always signs that a reign is ending, and they are usually spotted not in the king himself but in his court. In the inner circle, latent jealousies between advisers spill into open conflict, as they angrily debate who is to blame for the calamity, chewing over each other's past errors and pointing the finger at old and nascent enemies.

Marriages are failing, and mothers are raising their children alone. Many women would rather remain alone than marry a man who can't contribute anything to the family's income.

Breast-feeding does not belong in the realm of facts and hard numbers; it is much too intimate and elemental.

Maybe there's something about the outsiderness of being Jewish that makes for a fiery feminist type.

If you look at total numbers in the working and middle class, men still on average make more than women.

It's a fact that within the space of a few decades, women have achieved a massive shift in the role they play - in the way they act in public, and in the way they have conquered areas of the working world that were until recently considered a man's domain.

Every new medium has, within a short time of its introduction, been condemned as a threat to young people. Pulp novels would destroy their morals, TV would wreck their eyesight, video games would make them violent.