The Opt-Out Generation: homw many people are needed to create a "generation"...

The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In - NYTimes.com: "fter one emotional session with a friend, her 12-year-old daughter asked what all the fuss was about. O’Donnel told her: “This is the perfect reason why you need to work. You don’t have to make a million dollars. You don’t have to have a wealthy lifestyle. You just always have to be able to at least earn enough so you can support yourself.”

Nine years ago, O’Donnel was promoting a very different message. She was a spokeswoman of sorts for a group of women — highly educated, very accomplished, well-paid professionals with high-earning spouses — who in the early 2000s made headlines for leaving the work force just when they were hitting their stride. They were a small demographic to be sure (another, larger, group who left the work force at that time — poor mothers who couldn’t afford child care — went without notice), but they garnered a great deal of media attention.
This magazine, in a cover article by Lisa Belkin, called the phenomenon of their leaving work the “Opt-Out Revolution,” and other coverage followed: a Time magazine cover story on “The Case for Staying Home” and a “60 Minutes” segment devoted to a group of former mega-achievers who were, as the anchor Lesley Stahl put it, “giving up money, success and big futures” to be home with their children."