The XX Factor: What women really think.

No Math. Just TV.

Kara, go forth and absorb Picasso and Bernini (and then enlighten the rest of us). For my part, I'm sorry I didn't take art history in college. Or music history. In fact I think I'm a cretin. But I also regret, just as much, that I took zero math and as little science as I could get away with. I thought I was following my passions, too, and maybe I was, but now I think of the puzzle-solving part of math, which I like, and wonder if I dropped it for the wrong ie gendered reasons.

Melinda, I should have known that if I wrote about reading a novel in the evening I would offer myself up as How Does She Do It poster-woman. From now on I will write only after watching The View and Flight of the Conchords reruns. I think mother-guilt dates from whenever mothers, whether stay-at-home or working, decided that it was no longer OK to tell their kids to run outside to play and not give them another thought until bedtime (or maybe on a good night, dinner). I would hark back fondly to that time except that it was the 1950s.