I'm going to say something I've never said in my life: I think we need to pay more attention to men.

Just today, I opened my browser and found the following items directed, presumably, at me. First, there was study examining what kind of mothers opt-out of the workforce. Next, I was told women are apparently less happy than ever. Then, I found a piece about why closing the gender gap at work means more firings for us. If I didn't know how concerned I should be, stock art images of grim-faced weepers would have done the trick.

And hey, that's just today. If I wanted to read more, I could scroll back through blogs like Jezebel or Double X (or WomanUp at Politics Daily!), hit a few parenting sites, or go straight to the Motherlode. There, I would find answers to questions I didn't even know I was supposed to have. Breast or formula? Work or home? Men or she-men? Baby or maybe? Will I? Should I? Do I?

It's not that I don't appreciate this lively discussion of all my choices. (Where would I be, after all, if women before me hadn't given over their lives to making sure we all have some?) It's just that lately, simply reading about being a woman is making me feel like a hypochondriac with an illustrated textbook. And aggravating me more is a profound irony that while studies are choked with women found wanting -- in both senses -- the researchers are curiously silent on the activities of men.

This is odd, because it seems to me that men, of late, have been pretty damn active. I need hardly alert you to this week's traveling exhibition of Roman Polanski, David Letterman and John Edwards. (Don't let me leave out this summer's Sanford debacle, or Spitzer's turn in the spotlight.) My ladies, there is not world enough or time to list all others, but a timeline of gentlemen's misbehavior back to the Clinton era would look (appropriately enough) like the needle-reading on a lie-detector test.

But I seek no more insta-judging. (God forbid that my life be held up for examination.) One of my favorite articles this year was the Atlantic Monthly's "What Makes Us Happy?," the story of a longitudinal 1937 study of a bunch of Harvard sophomores through their lives, from marriage to divorce to death. That piece contained fascinating insights on men's views of Freud's dyad: love and work. But you know, 1937 was a long time ago. If I want to know what men are thinking about family life now, I only have Michael Lewis or Neal Pollack or Michael Chabon and their romans a Snuglis, received with the cooing applause granted the dad who does diaper duty at a dinner party.

I'm just curious. It's easy to dismiss the latest contenders as a bunch of liars, rats and fools, but I want to know what's making them so foolish. David Letterman, how do you feel about your work life? Bill Clinton, were you worried about your daughter? Eliot Spitzer, what do you want out of your marriage? Kennedy brothers, what did you want out of women? Out of life?

And Governor Sanford, why the hell were you digging those holes?