A great addition to an important discussion

books:


	• Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families Leslie Morgan Steiner Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

Good, but not Great

This book does well in capturing the woes of choosing to work versus staying at home. What is DOESN'T do is capture the REAL picture and demographic of mothers in the U.S.
Not all mothers can afford to have a live in nannay while they bang away on their computers.
Not all mothers are white and middle class.
Not all moms can afford to NOT work.
The lack of ethnic and economic diversity is this book was enough for me to not really take the book seriously.
If you want to get a good picture of the "Mommy Wars", go out and ask more women!!!! By only consulting a concentrated group of womem, the book really limits the perspective on what it's REALLY like to be a working or stay at home mom.
I found the humor refeshing and some of the essays enlightening, but all in all, this book was disappointing.

for more information click here

A great addition to an important discussion

As a middle-aged mother with a child in college, I read and reviewed this book with a "retrospective" lens, and truly enjoyed it. The Mommy Wars have been smoldering for decades, and it's very interesting to follow the dialogue between mothers who are nearly 20 years younger than I am. I applaud Ms. Steiner for tackling such an unwieldy project, and for re-opening this discussion for another generation of women.

That said, many of these fine essays were written by women who can afford nannies and/or household help -- whether they work or stay home with kids. In my part of the Midwest, WAHMs and SAHMs enlist (or beg) neighbors and grandparents for help with childcare and, in many cases, the frustrating search for good daycare centers is also a huge topic of conversation. But where I live, calling your sitter a nanny is considered an affectation. The essays in this book are written, primarily, from the East and West Coasts, as well as suburbs near Washington, D.C., where "nanny" is a household word.

No matter which side of the "war" they defend, the pieces tend to echo the sentiments of well-heeled women in the film , television, or publishing industries. Of course, this makes for some great reading. But it's very important to consider that perspectives from the East and West Coasts are often quite different from those of women who raise kids and work in the South or Midwest -- both culturally and economically.

Knowing that parents in my part of the country are also passionate about this issue, I would love to read more viewpoints from, say, middle America, or the deep South, where many women do not have the same choices as women who work in publishing and/or live in tony suburbs.

That said, there are some terrific pieces of writing in this book, and they are all worth every mother's precious reading time. Lois R. Shea's essay, "Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn," really stood out from the rest. Writing from rural New Hampshire, Shea shared an intriguing view of a lifestyle much different from the New York/Washingon DC/California pieces in the book. Shea's voice is honest, funny, and down-to-earth -- pure delight, and something new.

Let the dialogue continue!

for more information click here

smart book, interesting women

These are by and large wonderful essays, unflinchingly honest and profoundly thoughtful. I don't necessarily like every woman in this book, but I admire their willingness to open up their respective lives and thought processes for our inspection. The complaint that these women are homogeneous seems somewhat shallow and literal-minded to me. Yes, they're almost (not entirely) all women who have been writers at some point, but doesn't that come with the territory of a collection of personal essays? Yes, they are also primarily middle to upper-middle class, but that covers a lot of American women right there; more important, the issues explored, from depression to dealing with a disabled child to financial trade-offs are potentially universal. The range of voices and viewpoints is extremely varied, and I can only conclude that one or two of the naysayers here did not actually read the book. If you are not interested in exploring women's thoughts about the work/children balance, then I don't know why you would bother to pick up this book in the first place. But if you are, there is a lot here for anyone to identify with, take issue with, think about. I enjoyed the company of most of these women even when I disagreed with them, and think it's time well spent for anyone (fathers included) grappling with the question of who works and who takes care of the kids.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

search for books
career, choices, families, lives, mommy, stay-at-home, their

Impressum / about us