In the march issue of the Atlantic magazine, sandwiched between an article about Chinese Internet technology and a review of modernist art criticism, lies a seven-page essay called "Marry Him! The Case for Settling." Its author is Lori Gottlieb, a 40-year-old Los Angeles writer and single mother who admits that the idea of finding Mr. Right, a notion she once harbored, was in fact a bill of goods. Young women in search of marriage and family, she writes, should think seriously about resigning themselves to Mr. Good Enough.

Gottlieb (who's an acquaintance of mine) has already adapted this essay into a commentary on public radio's "Talk of the Nation" and discussed it on the "Today" show. It has sparked responses, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, whose collective word count surely exceeds that of her article by at least a hundred-fold. Partly that's the result of the button-pushing nature of the subject, and partly it's because of certain shrewd (or depending on your point of view, appalling) rhetorical choices Gottlieb makes over the course of her article. I won't attempt to capture the tone or content of the entire treatise (it's on newsstands and the Atlantic’s website); I want to quote from one passage that seems to be inflaming people the most.

"Every woman I know -- no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure -- feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

"Oh, I know -- I'm guessing there are single 30-year-old women ... who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren't widely representative, that I've been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and, basically, that I have no idea what I'm talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you're not worried, either you're in denial or you're lying."

Really? At 30, I felt panic at the thought of being married. But I'll leave the rebuttals on this point to others (some thoughtful, some apoplectic, can be found via a quick Internet search). Besides, I detect enough self-deprecating drollery in the essay to persuade me it's not the crime against humanity that many of its more vehement critics are convinced it is.

What does feel to me like a crime, however, is what "Marry Him!" assumes is most women's relationship to motherhood -- namely that it's as necessary a part of adult female life as breathing. Gottlieb, at 38, had a baby with donated sperm. She could have framed her argument around the problematic aura of "empowerment" that surrounds popular notions of single-by-choice parenting. Instead, she echoes the conventional wisdom that women don't just want children, we need them. We're so delirious with need, in fact, that we should make all manner of sacrifice -- including partnering with any old man -- in order to grab this biologically determined brass ring.