Last month, a Washington Post review of my new book asked why it is that so many mothers are so angry. After noting that lack of sleep doesn't fully explain this pervasive phenomenon, the writer suggested that motherhood represents the first time most women run headfirst into fundamental inequities -- not just the biological differences between men and women but also the disproportionate burdens imposed by a culture that still regards the raising of children as the mother's responsibility.

"It was horrible," she said. "My husband understood my stress level, but his answer was, 'Then you leave work.' It was my problem."

Since publishing my book, I have been pilloried in print and in cyberspace by hundreds of enraged stay-at-home mothers who have attacked everything from my appearance to my marriage and children. Their rage is genuinely frightening, as is their choice of targets. Ridiculing my weight or writing that my kids must be "scarred and dysfunctional" because I'm a working mother doesn't exactly advance the public debate over important work-family issues.