A few Sundays ago, I almost choked on my toast while perusing the paper.

It was a New York Times cover story about “Shared Parenting,” that utopian idea where both parents literally split childcare duties 50-50. The main couple in the story, Marc and Amy Vachon, both worked part-time and traded off parenting duties all week.

Great idea. Wonderful concept. Love to see how it’s done. But what drove me crazy was the reporter picked as their main subject a couple where the guy had previously spent many single years working a part-time schedule, rejecting promotions and declining to manage anyone so he could pursue other interests outside of work. Now if it was a driven CEO-type who ratcheted back to pursue the ideal of shared parenting, that would have been a fascinating story. Women do that all the time. Men? Not so much.

I was merely peeved. But the Brazen Careerist, aka Penelope Trunk, was livid.

If you don’t already read the Brazen Careerist, you should. Besides the fascinating life story - messy divorce, move with baby from New York City to Madison, Wisc., where she’s currently romancing a farmer - she cuts through the nonsense of the workplace and tells it like it is. Plus, when Cribsheet sent her a question once on flex time, she actually sent an answer back. In 5 minutes.

Anyway, back to the NYT piece. First she called the photo that ran with the article - Mom and kids are playing music while Dad is folding laundry - “Daddy Porn,” the equivalent of Mommy Porn, idealized pictures of mommyhood we’re all familiar with. Then she listed five reasons why the article made her want to “rip their heads off”…including the fact that “shared care kills two careers.”

But the most interesting thing was her disclosure that Marc and Amy were people she’d previously helped get some media attention and perhaps a book deal.

Wow, I thought. Maybe the thing she was most mad about was this: the Brazen Careerist was Out-Brazened.

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