"Why do I get the sinking suspicion that you hand your children over to a kid kennel every morning in order to drive the latest BMW and want not to feel guilty about it?"

It's pretty funny if you know me. It's really sad, whether you know me or not. Most mommies are familiar with the oft-invoked "Mommy Wars," a battle that has working and stay-at-home mothers going mano a mano for moral primacy. And most of us know that it is largely overblown. It is true that many of us are ambivalent about mothers going to work, but studies have indicated that a majority of men and women either approve of the practice or feel that a mother's choice -- either to stay at home or to enter the workforce -- should be respected.

This fact does not prevent the periodic release of poisonous diatribes against working mothers. It's just that they don't tend to come from other mothers -- at home or at work. They come from musty quarters where "choice" is rather narrowly defined. Richard Lowry gives us his take in the May 28 cover story of the National Review. Among other things, he says this about working mothers:

"They are a historical aberration; they represent a minority preference among women; and they run exactly counter to the standard of motherhood that should be encouraged by society. No wonder elite culture treats them as hothouse flowers, who must hear nary a discouraging word. But the fact is that working moms are at the very center of a variety of cultural ills. Maybe a little stigma is exactly what they deserve."

Ouch.

Child-rearing manuals advise the parents of stubborn toddlers that there comes a time when it is no longer effective to simply say "No," or to expect action as the result of a stern "Because I said so." Instead, it becomes necessary to offer distractions or, better yet, to suggest that a child make a choice. The parent conjures for the toddler a heady whiff of independence but tailors the "choices" to ensure that the outcome is "safe" or "appropriate." One creates the illusion of options while making sure that the child makes the choice that is desired by the parent.

This is a strategy that is well known to mothers, but not just because they are encouraged to employ it with their children. It is familiar because, as women, we are frequently treated as toddlers, enticed but ultimately manipulated by others as we make "choices." Implicit in the realm of reproductive choice is independence; but certain in the scenario of terminating a pregnancy is scorn or shame or criminality. And when women have children, they are once again offered a variety of choices -- some of them dignified as "rights" -- and once again, they find that there is really only one appropriate option, one way to do the right thing.

This is a free country. Debate is a good thing. We can feel strongly about missile shields and panty shields and Tom and Nicole. But we have supposedly been cured of any tendency to dominate or discriminate on the basis of misguided assumptions. It is not appropriate to look upon other humans with proprietary designs, except, of course, if they are children. (Here we do not discriminate, dispensing disrespect freely with no regard to race, creed or color.) And there was, of course, that mostly informal, though widely acknowledged, liberation of women.

So why, when a woman chooses both to work and to mother, does she incite the sort of rage reserved for wayward clerics and defilers of sacred things? Why is a report about the potential negative impact of child care on children offered as proof that working mothers are selfish and unkind? Where is this pack of boogeywomen, racing to egotistical satisfaction in fancy cars, braking long enough to dump their children with strangers and then speeding past saintly stay-at-home moms, forcing them to eat their haughty dust?

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.