While the Mommy Wars occasionally die down to smoldering embers, it doesn't take much to fan the flames. The latest flare-up? John and Elizabeth Edwards' decision to pull their children out of school for a year and take them on the campaign trail, discussed in the Sunday New York Times.

Last week on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog (www.svmoms.com), a local online collective of mommybloggers that I help manage, a blogger blasted the Edwards for this choice and urged them to pack up their family and go home to their pleasure palace, following news reports of a cranky exchange with one of the children.

The mommyblogger charged Elizabeth with being a terrible mother for forcing her "young children, who should be in school, to ride in buses and talk to the press when they obviously don't want to."

Well Elizabeth Edwards reads the mommyblogs, and quickly responded, defending her choices -- and most important her right to make a choice. "You don't get to say I am a terrible mother because you think you wouldn't make my choices in my situation," she wrote in a response already reported on national television.

You go, girl! If there's any lesson we moms have learned through years of trying to put out mommy-war blazes is that good mothers can make very different choices. There are no right choices for anyone. (Those who pretend there are get tagged "sanctimommies," but that's a whole other topic.)

The online debate over the original post, "Speak to the press, kiddo, or else a time out!" is at http://svmomblog.typepad.com/silicon_valley_moms_blog/2007/08/speak-to-the-pr.html .

The back-and-forth exchanges and Elizabeth Edwards' response raged for days. Commenters overwhelmingly supported Elizabeth. We heard from working moms and stay-at-home moms, from moms homeschooling their kids, from moms who took their kids out of school to spend a year traveling, from moms who made the choice to move their families into a trailer at the beach for the summer.

Moms did ask whether or not the Edwards' kids were having fun on the bus (my guess is yes, they're not only getting attention from mom and dad, but from a horde of intelligent adults who laugh at their jokes and probably don't mind the occasional game of Crazy 8s).

For me, it'd be a no-brainer -- an opportunity to spend a year traveling with my kids around the country, with enough money to afford a tutor (I know my limits, homeschooling is not for me).

That sounds wonderful. Yeah, I'd ignore the kids for large parts of the day because I'd be working, but that'd be no different from my life now. I work at home full-time, and my kids know that unless they're bleeding they have to fend for themselves until I come out of my office to grab a cup of coffee or take care of other pressing needs. They used to have a nanny to run to, now they are old enough to deal with most things.

Yeah, sure, I feel guilty sometimes that the message I send seems to be, "When I'm sitting in my office I don't care about you." And on some stressed-out days I wonder if they think that I don't love them enough.

In my mostly saner moments I know that they know I love them more than anything but that there are things I need to do and things that they need to do and we don't always get to do these things together.

And I think about the tiny farm community in Poland I visited on a roots search years ago -- farm kids were basically ignored all day while their parents did endless chores. Clearly, working within earshot of your kids but basically ignoring them is a tradition that dates back to the cave days. I really don't think Cave Mama was stressing out about spending too much time gathering berries instead of spending quality time with her kids.

When I think about going on the road with my kids, were that possible, well, it'd be hard to tear the high-schooler away from his friends. But the Edwards kids are 9 and 7, ages at which the little bottles of hotel shampoo and the magic of room service hold endless fascination those Eloise books, about a little girl who lives in hotels, are popular for a reason.

And for kids at those ages a bus would be a very cool way to get around because, unlike a car (they'd likely be happy to point out) you don't have to stay in your seat.

And what about the perennial childhood fantasy of running off to join the circus? We went to a tent circus this summer, and my 9-year-old would have joined in a heartbeat once he discovered that the circus pulls up stakes every two or three days, that circus kids work with their families and don't go to school, and they travel in cool buses and RVs. ...

Wait a minute, that sounds a lot like a presidential campaign.