"Far from the Bible Belt's conservative territories, in blue-state cities and suburbs, young, educated, married mothers find themselves not uninterested in the metaconversation about 'having it all' but untouched by it," writes Lisa Miller in this week's New York. These are the so-called "retro wives," women who could have high-flying careers but instead choose to stay home with their kids.

But at this point, Miller's story itself feels retro: The fascination with well-heeled women giving up work for family is decades old.

Ten years ago, Lisa Belkin gave the genre its most famous formulation with "The Opt-Out Revolution," her 2003 Times story on Ivy League–educated young women deciding to be stay-at-home moms. But the tradition of the opt-out story stretches back much farther — the Times published "Case History of an Ex-Working Mother" back in 1953. Such stories are now common enough that one expert in work-life law published an entire study of them, identifying 119.

Despite the reams of pages devoted to the subject, opting out has never been a real trend. The number of married women who leave behind successful careers to care for kids is a very small subset of the stay-at-home mom population. So why do these stories have such staying power?

Part of the impetus for opt-out stories is surely their pot-stirring potential; the subtext of these narratives is almost always that kids are better off if moms (and not dads) stay home with them full-time. And few things are surer to stir up controversy among the largely middle- and upper-class people who buy magazines and read The New York Times than suggesting they're raising their kids wrong.

But there's something else at work too: a genuine anxiety about how Americans lead their lives. Miller herself betrays it in her New York piece. She and her husband both work, she says, but "I yearn sometimes for the vast swaths of time [stay-at-home mom] Kelly Makino has given herself to keep her family's affairs in order." Balancing work and family is difficult, especially now that American parents are spending more time on both, and there's an undeniable appeal in the idea of choosing just one.

Especially when it looks so pretty. Makino, Miller writes, now spends her days taking the kids hiking and to museums, buying her husband dark-wash jeans, and preparing his favorite recipes, like "one for pineapple fried rice that he remembered from his childhood in Hawaii." Thanks to Makino's choice, the whole family's life is now Pinterest-ready. The opt-out story is aspirational.