I was grousing to my husband about my crazy-quilt days - planning a bridal shower, helping my daughter sort through the benefits program offered by her employer, swapping out cars at the repair shop, not to mention showing up at the office - and instead of offering to pitch in, he said:

"Imagine how crazy Sarah Palin's days are."

The Republican nominee for vice president talks to People magazine about juggling breast pumps and BlackBerries and the Mommy Wars begin again. This time, however, it is tough to tell which side you are on.

Working mothers who champion a woman's right to find fulfillment outside the home are looking at Palin's five children - one on his way to Iraq, one pregnant and unmarried, and one with special needs - and thinking that she can't possibly run a family and a campaign.

Stay-at-home mothers who feel so strongly that young children need the nurturing and attention only a mother can provide are looking at the complexity of Palin's work and family life and saying that it is proof that she can handle the job of vice president.

The Alaska governor's labor was starting last spring but she gave a keynote speech in Texas anyway. She went back to work three days after son Trig was born, putting his crib in her office and discreetly nursing him at staff meetings.

And the stay-at-home mothers who might have been appalled are beaming with pride in her.

Meanwhile, the working mothers whose maternity leaves might not have lasted as long as a beach vacation - and who know how crazy Palin's life is because it is the same life they are living - are wondering why the woman isn't over the edge.

When you have female Republican surrogates out there saying that it is sexist to wonder if Palin can do it all when Barack Obama has never been asked who is minding his kids, you know the world has been turned on its head.

It is clear that we, as a country, still aren't sure how we feel about working mothers.

They, Gloria Steinem said in the Los Angeles Times last week, have two full-time jobs and suffer more from that single injustice than does anyone else does from any other.

"Women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it," she wrote, suggesting that this may be the final frontier of the social justice movement.

Palin has put it on the national agenda.

Maybe the question we are asking should not be: Can a woman multi-task well enough to be a mother of five and a vice president? Maybe the question should be: Why does she have to?

I don't know about you, but I am very confused. I don't think my children are, however.

I don't think they ever saw me as a strong, independent, role model of a mother. I think they saw me as exhausted and half nuts, and they had a front-row seat. Meanwhile, I felt like I was doing two jobs equally badly.

I have written before that I fully expect them to repudiate my decision to work and raise them. I don't begrudge them that. We haven't, after all, got this working motherhood thing figured out yet.

But I do wonder if they will vote that way, too, in this election.

I wonder if they will decide that John McCain is clueless if he assumes that a woman with so young and needful children could help him manage this country in the Gore-Cheney mold of vice presidents we have come to expect.

Or if he is one of the good guys because he refuses to assume that she can't.