Yesterday I popped into my girlfriend''s office for a chat. She and I have a lot in common: same professional yet dead end job which we have kept for years because of its family friendliness, similar world views, ambitious husbands, and a love of running. We ran Twin Cities together this past fall. There is a sort of bonding process that comes with hammering out a three hour run together. I think that we would have been better friends if she and I didn''t live on the exact opposite sides of the Cities and if she hadn''t lived here her entire life thus already having a robust network of friends and community. I hope this doesn''t sound mean because I really like this girl, but quite honestly our friendship never really took off because she didn''t need any more good friends.

Anyway, during this conversation it came out that she and her husband have decided that next year she will quit to stay at home full time. I told her that I too planned on either staying home or getting an ultra part time job at the kids'' school when we move in June, 2007.

This prompted an extensive conversation about our careers, our families, feminism, and our general apathy for our current work situation. We are both somewhat feminists. Yet this double career thing with kids is not all it is cracked up to be. To be sure, my husband''s particular career choice as a surgery resident sucks up an inordinate amount of familial resources. This has created everything from outrage, to apathy, to acceptance on my part over the years. Quite honestly, I had to allow some of my anger to go in order to survive. This arrangement isn''t fair but I didn''t like the person I was becoming. Who wants to snivel over dirty dishes? It doesn''t matter that we are both professionals, he isn''t in any place to pitch in. I could analyze this to death and try to insert the public debate into the microcosm of my household, but it is what it is.

The staggering amount of books on motherhood, feminism, and the current state of marriage suggest that I''m not the only one sorting this all out. I was bothered when my son asks why doesn''t daddy help out more. I lamely covered by stating that Daddy works very hard at work helping others so mommy has to do more at home. Still, I had to ask myself, what kind of example am I setting here? It isn''t like this is a short stint of disparate sacrifice for the family''s needs. Nine years of our lives we will be involved in surgical training. I don''t kid myself. We are setting a pattern and a tacit agreement for how this family runs. As much as things have changed, they haven''t changed that much at all.

At the same time, my girlfriend and I both commiserated that we wanted to be more involved in our kids'' lives and we could only entertain this idea because we benefit from having professional spouses. I can hear the groans from the men out there. We want our cake and we want to eat it too. Yes, yes, I hear you!

Even though I have read compulsively on this motherhood and feminism issue, the lines are just incredibly blurred for me on this topic. I''m wildly fascinated by how others come to find peace in their lives. At the same time, I hate that the mommy instinct can be wielded against us too. As in, you choose to stay home/mommy track/ whatever while I busted my a**. You made your bed, lie in it. Blech.

My girlfriend and I just came to the conclusion that we''re tired (and perhaps a wee bit pissed off). Mostly, however, we don''t want our life to pass us by. She will be 40 next year when her downshifting occurs. I will be 33.

I jokingly state that I''m wholly unqualified to offer any advice on the topics of marriage, career, or parenting. Suffice it to say that I''m not even following my own advice, or at least the crap I was saying a couple of years ago.

The truth of the matter is that I''ve changed my tune on a whole hell of a lot of things. At one point in my life I used to be a college Republican. When I first started my career, I encountered very little difference in my treatment because of my gender. I used to think, why are these women so angry? Come on, we have come so far so quickly.

Then I became a working mother. Now, dare I say it, I''m somewhat liberal, championing causes like universal preschool, school choice, and extending FMLA to 6 months.

One of the problems with declaring yourself a specific label, such as feminist in my case, is that there is a whole lot of grey areas. For example, I don''t have a problem with soft porn. I think that there is a place for sexuality to be laughed at, revered, idealized, and talked about. However, the slippery slope becomes when women become subjugated and vicitimized. Perhaps I can think about this in terms of a crime against humanity rather than a gender thing. Somewhere on the continuum one goes from enjoying a little booby to subjugating a stripper who can''t break the cycle all the way down to the woman sold into the sex trade. Not to be all lawyerly, but there it is damn difficult to create bright line test between right and wrong to me. As the famous justice said, I know porn when I see it.

Feminism fascinates me and has become closely aligned (for me) with how a society treats its children. Many times, women face harder choices because of their kids and the pain is born more exclusively by the female parent. Perhaps our biology and psychology will always prevent us from achieving equality. Perhaps the best that we can hope and fight for is for fair treatment even though it can never be the same. I don''t say this to sound defeated, it is what it is.

Who knows what my take on this will be ten years from now. Until then, I eat my humble pie and listen closely to how others figure this dance out hoping to glean a bit of wisdom.