Caitlin Flanagan: So easy to hate on, so (inexplicably) hard to understand.

Wow. I've read just about every single thing Caitlin Flanagan has published. I've also read most of what's been written about her, and quizzed her in person at some length about her views. So why is it the Caitlin Flanagan her liberal critics describe is almost completely unrecognizable to me?

Here is what Flanagan has to say, as I understand it: It's all but impossible to be a full-time mother and have a full-time career. The same is true for dads. The difference is, whether by nature or culture, women are more particular about their children's upbringing, and they feel more keenly the separation from their kids having a full-time job necessitates.

Here's what liberal feminists (a group I usually have no quarrel with) hear: Women are meant to be mothers. Kids whose primary caregiver is someone other than their mother suffer emotional harm.

Those are disagreeable sentiments, to be sure. But guess what? Flanagan never makes anything like those claims. Her focus is almost exclusively on what the working vs. staying home conflict means for the mothers. What she does say is that a woman who spends virtually all of her waking time with her children typically has a stronger bond with them than the woman who spends three or four hours a day with them. (Again, I'm certain she'd say the same about men.) This is where her beef with feminists comes in. To feminists, it's heresy to say that working women might be sacrificing the intensity of the mother-child bond. They've been saying this for so long, an entire generation of women has grown up expecting it to be true -- only to find themselves confused and grieved at the separation anxiety they feel upon handing their kids off to nannies or daycare. I suppose feminists would argue that such anxiety is nothing but culturally-imposed guilt. But do they really believe that themselves? If they did, I suspect their attacks on Flanagan would contain far less vitriol.