“I know this is one of the last taboos of modern society,” she writes. “To admit that you, a mother of the new millennium, don’t find your offspring thoroughly fascinating and enjoyable at all times is a state of affairs very few women are prepared to admit. We feel ashamed, and unfit to be mothers.” Kirwan-Taylor feels alienated from those mums who have made raising children their de facto careers, but her guilt subsides once she starts talking to friends who also find aspects of parenting dreary, and shrinks who tell her that child-centered parenting just creates narcissistic children anyway.

To be sure Kirwan-Taylor is in a privileged position. She can choose to opt out of singalongs and birthday parties because she can afford to dispatch a nanny in her place. And maybe her insistence that her kids are self-reliant is simply a huge rationalization for her absenteeism. But before you label her a shallow, whiny woman who never should have had kids in the first place — Daily Mail readers beat you to it, anyway — let’s take a moment to appreciate her candor and to consider what I think is her important, if smug, conclusion.

“Frankly, as long as you’ve fed them, sheltered them and told them they are loved, children will be fine. Mine are — at the risk of sounding smug — well-adjusted, creative children who respect the concept of work. They also accept my limitations.”

Let’s start our week by hashing out some of the thorny issues raised by this article. Are parents today too hyper-vigilant, or do too many outsource child-rearing? Does someone who admits to finding aspects of parenthood really dull love her kids less than one who enthusiastically attends baby sign language class? If a man wrote a column about how boring he found fatherhood would we find it more — or less — distasteful than a column written by a mother? And would this article ever have been published in an American newspaper?

Discuss.

“Even though the Mexican constitution says we are equal, the vows put the woman in a very disadvantaged position where the man can make it her obligation to reproduce, take care of the home,” Teresa Ulloa, president of the women’s rights organization Defensoras Populares, told the AP.

The old vows — a 537-word ode to marriage written by liberal politician Melchor Ocampo in 1859 — were created to replace religious vows endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church. (After penning the vows Ocampo was executed for promoting the separation of church and state — yet for some reason his vows were left in the civil marriage law.) In March, Defensoras Populares convinced Mexico’s Congress to adopt a resolution that urges judges to skip the vows, though they are still on the books in 31 states.

The AP didn’t reprint the full vows, but they sound pretty bad. In part they order a husband to treat his wife with “generous benevolence that the strong should give to the weak” and that a wife should “avoid awakening the most brusque, irritable and hard part of (her husband’s) character.”

Abandoning the traditional vows has inspired some Mexican states to hold contests to see who can come up with some classy, modern alternatives.

At one DIY wedding I attended, the husband promised his wife that he would forever endure her need to watch the WB. Perhaps that doesn’t qualify as enlightened, but I thought it was pretty sweet. If you’ve heard — or recited — any great, egalitarian vows, tell us about them.

Advocates say that most teenage girls do seek help from a parent when faced with an unintended pregnancy, and those who don’t have good reasons not to. But instead of encouraging young women to seek guidance from other trusted adults, this bill would force them to face their abortion decision alone. Should this bill pass, a grandmother who simply accompanied her granddaughter to get an abortion could spend up to a year in jail, pay a steep fine and be subject to a civil lawsuit.

In an Op-Ed on TomPaine.com, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan writes about Spring Adams, a 13-year-old from Idaho who was shot to death by her father when he learned she was trying to end a pregnancy that resulted from his incest. “If CCPA passes, trusted, caring and responsible adults would be faced with the threat of prosecution for responding to a young woman like Spring who approaches them because she fears involving her parent in her request for an abortion,” Keenan writes.

This bill is not your standard-issue Republican attempt to make it as difficult as possible for women to get abortions — this bill actually puts teens’ lives at stake, even in cases that are far less extreme than Adams’. What if a young woman delays an abortion because she’s afraid to tell a parent, or because a judicial bypass is not easy to get, and then all of a sudden it’s too late to get one in her state? At least now, with the help of another adult, she might have the option of traveling to another state for an abortion. But if this bill passes, she won’t have that choice, and will likely become a mother.

Take a minute to fight this bill by sending an e-mail to your senator.