The XX Factor: What women really think.

My Nest Runneth Over

It is not easy to stop being somebody's mommy, but there comes a time when your kids are done. The five-year-old gets on that damn carousel and only two or three horses go up and down before she has a tattoo and a boyfriend. Mimi Swartz in her Double X Empty Nest column wonders how she will restart her life as her son Sam transitions away to his own adult life. Over the next few months... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)

Forget Changing Parties, Why Won't Specter Go Home?

Clearly, in a democracy, the voters get to decide if they're comfortable electing an oldster to represent their interests. Just as clearly, the seniority system puts a premium on experience. Still, some of these guys are too old to drive cars—yet we're happy to have them drive the ship of state?

Between the senior citizens on the Supreme Court and the geezers in Congress, I'm starting to wonder if there's something in the D.C. air. But we're in a recession: Let's open up some jobs for younger people.

Should Men Be Listening to That Ticking Bio-Clock?

Remember Tony Randall, who made his first baby at age 77? Or Michael Douglas, Rupert Murdoch, Mick Jagger—all still churning out offspring in their elder years? Or Mr. Rahman, whose reproduction line Emily Y. noted below, still turning them out at 63? They might be a bit ... irresponsible. Older men's swimmers might still be strong enough to hit an egg, but the chromosomes they're carrying might be a bit weak. According to the U.K. Independent's Steve Connor, reporting on an Australian scientist's retrospective study of more than 33,000 children born in the United States between 1959 and 1965, older men's offspring are more likely to show "neural tube defects and a range of medical disorders of later life, such as schizophrenia, dyslexia, bipolar disorder and autism." These older fathers' children did less well on intelligence tests ... unlike the older mothers' children, who did better than those of younger moms.

It's kinda nice to know that women shouldn't be alone in worrying about our aging oeufs—that men should worry about their innermost parts, too. And perhaps it's useful to know that women should feel free to make babies while older—but should rely on a younger man's, um, input.

One Wedding, Three Children and ... a Funeral?

More for Susannah on Julia Roberts: I don't think either Dahlia or I were motivated to tear into that Newsweek piece on her by our undying love for America's sweetheart. Rather, we were struck by the article's disingenuousness, what I called its "eyelash-batting" quality. I get that by using the phrase "Hollywood ancient," the author is distancing himself from the assertion that the 41-year-old Roberts is hopelessly superannuated. But by never refuting, or indeed questioning, that assertion, he winds up simply reinforcing it, while also getting to wipe away a tear for JR's poor lost career.

Your comparison of Roberts' "comeback" with Mickey Rourke's is telling, in terms of what it reveals about our (unconscious?) presumptions about women, children, and work. On the one hand, there's Rourke, who made horribly self-destructive choices, alienated every director he worked with, then spent 10 to 15 years spiraling into addiction and despair before resurrecting his career with The Wrestler. Then there's Roberts, who took a planned five-year break at the height of her career to raise a pair of twins and a younger son. Mind you, this is no attack on Rourke, whom I love as both an actor and a public personality—I was delighted to welcome him back from obscurity, I wish he'd won the Oscar, and I'd far rather hang out with him than with Julia Roberts. But to compare his decade of darkness with Roberts' extended maternity leave—hey, they both stopped working, then started again!—is to reinforce the belief (held at a semiconscious level by many working mothers, including, at times, me) that opting out of the work force for a time is somehow a source of shame.

Pretty (Old) Woman

Yuck. Like Dahlia, I hate the way this Newsweek article on Julia Roberts perpetuates sexist assumptions—41-year-old women are "ancient"! Time off to raise children = career suicide!—while batting its eyelashes innocently. The author is effectively saying, gee, what a shame that people might think Roberts was a washed-up old hag ... just because I'm publishing a Newsweek article to that effect! Dahlia points to a few actors exactly Roberts' age, all of whose careers are currently at their white-hot peak: Jamie Foxx, Benicio del Toro, Philip Seymour Hoffman. And what about Clive "Methuselah" Owen, who's cast opposite Roberts in next week's Duplicity? He's 47, poor thing, just like our enfeebled, half-senile new president.

There are other, non-gender-related things that bug me about this article—for example, calling Roberts' massive, toothy grin a "Mona Lisa smile" seems simply off. Isn't the whole point of a Mona Lisa smile that it's the subtlest of expressions, almost not a smile at all? Then there's the fact that the author resignedly eulogizes Roberts' career without having yet seen her new movie. Duplicity, a corporate-spy thriller that's the second film from exciting new director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) stands an excellent chance of being both a critical and box-office success, and even if it's not, both Roberts and Owen have survived other flops. Before we declare Julia Roberts' "comeback" a failure, can we let her actually come back?