Here's a matter that knows no party or region or class: flowers, which I must remember to teach my son are not always such a thoughtful gift. One of my dearest friends celebrated a big, big birthday last week. And what did her husband do to mark the milestone? ''He went to the Kroger's for flowers,'' she said, rocked by the care and consideration ...

Linda's piece on Slate yesterday notes that the statistics on teen pregnancy show a grim reality for girls in Bristol Palin's situation. The numbers on teen marriage don't look much better. A 2001 study found: If the wife was a teenager at first marriage, the marriage is much more likely to dissolve than if the wife was at least 20 years of ...

In an op-ed in the Guardian this morning, Jessica Valenti, founder of the blog Feministing and author of the book Full Frontal Feminism, discusses what she believes has been the media's unfair treatment of Michelle Obama, wife of Barack. Valenti writes, ''Media coverage of [Michelle] Obama has packed a nasty racism-sexism combo that is quickly ...

Like Emily Y., I did not exactly grow up planning my wedding—or picking out baby names, for that matter. In fact, the whole time I was single, I had this recurring nightmare that it was my wedding day and there was nothing I could do about it. Even as the actual day approached, I was completely terrified, and vividly remember a conversation I ...

Well, what confused me is that Tien does not describe her marriage as a bad marriage, or her predicament as particular. ''Don't misunderstand. I would not, could not disparage my marriage,'' she writes, after spending 500 words describing her husband as a drivelling idiot. And then: ''Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. ...

It seems we are having two discussions here: writing about a rotten marriage, and having one. I agree with Hanna, I don’t know how you write a piece that begins, “I contemplate divorce every day” and not end up writing the sequel, “How I Chose My Divorce Lawyer.” Hanna, you quote Ellen Tien’s assertion, “Beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature ...

Forgive me for wondering whether the whole “women-who-crave-divorce-in-print” boomlet we’re contemplating here is yet another manifestation of the “mommy wars” phenomenon. That is the media-created dustup wherein approximately 18 women (all of them upper-middle-class residents of Manhattan) purport to speak for all American women, in describing a ...

Well, I suppose that through a certain feminist lens everything looks like progress (From Anna Karenina to Ellen Tien). There was a time when any literary heroine who attempted some escape from the confines of a dull, loveless marriage wound up dead or alone or trapped in a dull, loveless marriage anyway. Then came the silent sufferers of the John ...

Ann and Meghan, when I tried to come up with male journalists and essayists who run down their wives last night, Norman Mailer kept popping into my head. Wrong era (and maybe wrong kind of misogyny). The men's companion volume to The Bitch in the House, as I recall, was mild and mewling by comparison. Do women bitch more because they're ...

Meghan, you ask how male writers treat their wives in print, and I can't say I've been browsing the magazine racks. But for a recent sample, I looked back at Philip Weiss' New York magazine piece on ''the trouble with sex and marriage,'' which supplied us here at XX with a lot of grist not so long ago. I thought I'd recalled squirming at his ...