Did anyone else catch 60 Minutes last night? I saw one story - one of those usually quite dismissable lifestyle trend stories about highly educated women choosing to stay home and raise kids rather than stay in the professional world full time. (I say "easily dismissable" because I am never sure where these stories get their data proving that anything they're reporting is a "trend.")

What sort of shocked me about the story was the input of one woman - an academic (philosophy professor, I believe) who seemed to be in her 60's, had raised one child of her own, and was sounding the alarm about this dangerous trend, siting two major points: the loss of the talent, and the appalling acceptance of a "dependant" status on the part of such women. Her basic stance was that highly-educated women were betraying themselves and society by choosing to stay home - even for a while - with kids.

Ms. HIRSHMAN: You know, that's such a loaded word. These women are choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity for very complicated work, they're choosing lives in which they do not use their capacity to deal with very powerful other adults in the world, which takes a lot of skill. I think there are better lives and worse lives.