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Welcome to the Double X-Gab Fest for Thursday, March 21st, the Officewife edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen here in the D.C. studio.

I am joined in New York by New Republic writer, Norrine Malone. Hi, Norrine.

Hey, Hannah. And Slate contributor, Seth, Seth, hi, Hannah. Our three topics today are, one, the retro housewife. Do we all secretly want to revive her? Two, the Stubanville, Ohio rape case. And three, the office wife, what makes for a perfect one.

So let's start with retro housewives. New York Magazine has a cover story on the feminist stay-at-home wife, an urban hipster who decides that life is more peaceful if one person stays at home.

And because women, she says, feel the tug of home more than men do,

that person should be the wife. This comes on the heels of a new national study, telling us that we

should all marry young, as well as other signs of nostalgia out there. The New York Magazine

story by Lisa Miller is about a woman named Kelly McKino, who calls herself a flaming liberal.

I didn't realize anyone actually uses that phrase anymore, a flaming liberal. And a feminist, but concludes after sizing up her meager salary at her social work job, that having it all means staying at home. And here is a quote from her. I want my daughter to be able to do anything she wants, but I also want to say, have a career that you can walk away from at the drop of a hat. I have to say that part of the story really killed me. Seth, do you find it convincing as the unmarried man on our podcast, do you secretly, without telling any of your dates, yearn for a stay-at-home wife?

In the sense that I think everyone wants someone who will wash all the dishes and clean up the house and take care of the

children and leave you free to do lots of stuff, sure. But no, not totally in the sense that I find

it attractive in women when they like their jobs and they're good at their jobs and they're ambitious

and they have passions. So I sort of have mixed feelings about it, I guess. Okay, just do the hypothetical.

Like let's say you have a wife or you have a girlfriend and then she tells you that she wants to stay at home.

Do you then feel like what is the innermost, innermost feeling you have?

Like, do you first delight and then you worry or do you first worry and then delight?

...