"The discussion started at my book club, but it might as well have started with Adam and Eve. We read The Awakening, a 1899 novel by Kate Chopin that describes the fight by a young woman, Edna Pontellier, for independence against the conventions of the time. We are all married working mothers. No matter how far society has come from Edna’s, most of us find the bulk of child care and the more banal duties of running a household fall to us. We felt for Edna.