The XX Factor: What women really think.

Sugar Pie in the Sky

Jessica, I want to know: What are these fabulous, creative, part-time jobs that we would all be enjoying if only our putative sugar parents would subsidize us? Is there a job, freelance or no, that offers "lucrative assignments and continued relevance" (not to mention a dental plan) and that doesn't entail longer hours of work than anyone with a child (or anyone who wants a rich personal life outside of work) can possibly spare? I fear that Dahlia's stark assessment of the reality of working motherhood is soberingly true: If you dedicate yourself to excelling in your field, you will daily find yourself enacting scenarios from the Harry Chapin ballad "Cat's in the Cradle," that AM-radio classic in which a busy father misses out on his son's childhood because ... oh, don't make me describe that song, I'll start weeping. I talked about this a bit in Slate's Movie Club yesterday when I described my daughter yelling "Don't work!" as I hustle off to yet another movie screening at 6 p.m. To be a working mother is to be told daily by everyone, including an authority as irrefutable as your own 2-year-old, that you're doing it all wrong. And they're all, in some way, right—but what's the alternative? Is there any middle ground between "Cat's in the Cradle" and sitting home smoking Djarums on someone else's dime?

It seems to me that what Jessica's asking for—and it's a completely legitimate thing for the next generation of women to want—isn't so much a wealthy suitor as a restructuring of the American workplace, not to mention the American educational system. Why marry Thurston Howell III to ensure your kid a spot in private school when there's a good public school down the block? Maybe Barack Obama will be our Prince Charming. But with the economy in the shape it's in, he ain't gonna be anybody's sugar daddy.