Embracing Harriet.(In real life: first-person America)

"But what do at-home mothers actually do?"--She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off

DANVILLE, CALIFORNIA--As I perused the library shelves, She Works/He Works dared me to slide it into my non-employed, at-home-mom hands. I resisted. Pundits with masseuses and headache management specialists might be able to handle the fiery arguments a book like that can open up. But I'm a fun-time nurturer of four adolescents, armed only with two Advils and a half-wrapped piece of sugarless gum buried in my purse.

My seventh-grader, Michelle, interrupted this one-person debate, juggling Renaissance books for her research project. "Mom, I'm ready. Can we go?"

I nodded. And on impulse I grabbed the get-a-job-girl book. I'd read it in short doses, take deep breaths, not get sucked in. The librarian scanned Michelangelo, Bellini, and da Vinci, each swipe sending a high-pitched beep into the air. Last swipe, the feminist manifesto: beep.

Michelle set up shop at the kitchen table. I read from the counter a few steps away, in between chopping garlic and onions for the spaghetti.

The two full-time working-morn authors thanked the National Institutes of Mental Health for the $1 million grant that allowed them to study 300 full-time working couples (60 percent with children) over a four-year period. After three interviews with each member of this homogeneous group, the researchers concluded that stay-at-home-moms simply no longer exist.

The onions burned. Wow, I'm extinct. Dial telephones, albino squirrels, and me.