HEATHER HAVRILESKY ON THE MOMMY PROBLEM: “Forty years ago, my mother and her two friends drank coffee, ate homemade cherry pie and chain-smoked their way through lively debates over whether a popular author was daringly frank or a chauvinist, while their children were expected to play nicely outside and rarely interrupt. Today, all three mothers might instead be engaged in some elaborate craft project, with each woman stopping the conversation every few seconds to open a little jar of paint or to help glue on some tiny eyes.”

All true, but complain about it as much as you like, it’s the result of female intrasex competition. Meanwhile, here’s something I wrote years ago.

But don’t go this far: “These women are the men their mothers divorced.”