Well-researched look at women's place in the workforce

books:


	• The Truth Behind the "Mommy Wars": Who Decides What Makes a Good Mother? Miriam Peskowitz Seal Press, 2005 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An impressive book.

The author offers an enlightening and readable mix of solid academic research, personal experience, and feminist manifesto. She rejects the Mommy Wars as a media invention designed to sell insecure mothers more stuff, and suggests that our society needs to make changes that reflect a real commitment to the work of parenting: offer more high-quality part-time work, more gender parity in childrearing, and more awareness that the "choices" parents make are limited by economic and social pressures. An excellent book.

Somewhat interesting

This book is somewhat thought provoking, but quickly redundant. The theory that working moms and stay at home moms are at war felt artificial and the resources used to support that this war is going on seemed either unbelievable to me or that I must be missing something. In real life, while there is guilt and mixed feelings about being one or the other, I don't see this as a huge struggle for women. We don't have time to be at war with each other, being a mother is hard and we are all trying to work it. Any attempt to make this a war seems media driven, and I imagine this book feeds from this drama, although again, I haven't seen this to be a huge issue. But then again, I don't watch talk shows, so maybe I'm missing something.

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Slow start, but glad I kept reading

I almost abandoned this book at the start because I found it boring. It read more like a college paper. But, I kept reading and the book got a lot better.

This book is an unbiased look at mothers across the board: stay-at-home or working (any amount of hours). The author does not take sides and even questions if they whole "Mommy Wars" phenomenon is media created. She says that at the park what she sees are working and stay-at-home moms chatting and enjoying each others' company.

Discussed at length in this book is the question of how much "choice" women really have in the working/stay-at-home decision. She talks about how most part time work pays poorly or really isn't all that part time afterall. She also talks about the lack of benefits offered for much part-time work. She talks about how many of these factors drive mothers who would really like some actual part-time work into their homes completely. She also discusses the difficulty many women have in getting back into the workplace after many years at home, leaving big gaps in their resumes that have to be explained (and many employers are not overly excited about the "excuse" of motherhood-thinking that women have not really kept up any useful skills at home).

There is also lengthy discussion about how worn out most moms are and there are also many pages of stories and discussions about stay-at-home dads.

Finally, the book ends with some inspiring stories about real, average women who have made a difference with their time towards issues that effect parents. One example was the Starbucks public breastfeeding situation-how average mothers got together and changed policy that made it easier for moms to nurse in public.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the discussion about the "At-Home Infant Care" program which helps poor women stay home to parent their own children until age 2. I did not know about this program and am very proud to be from a state with this program in use. What a wonderful program to give poor mothers real choices! discussed in conjunction with this was welfare reform of 1996 which pushed poor womens' infants into daycare from birth. The message being that women are more valuable as workers than as mothers.

I really think all mothers/fathers will be able to relate to this book on some level.

Concerning the lack of choices-I agree to some extent. However, just because a choice leads to a less than ideal situation doesn't mean it still wasn't a choice. When one decides to have a family there are going to be trade offs. It's unrealistic to think there won't be. Sure, you can advocate for things like paid maternity leave, etc. but what about people who are childless, people who never marry, or people who raise their own children (which is probably over 50% of people/families)? Should we tax payroll money from a parent who is the sole provider for a family so that a dual income family-who probably make more money overall-can have paid maternity leave? If you are working and having children, you are going to have to make some sacrafices on one side or the other. At-home parents sacrafice too. They can't put away money tax free for "childcare costs" as working parents can for daycare costs-even tho at-home parents caring for their own children lose $10,000s/year for their choice. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

One other thing that worried me a bit is that in all this talk about moms we can forget about what is best for our kids. There was some discussion about all day pre-K programs, etc, that are convenient for some mothers. All day kindergarten would fit into this category too. Are these things really good for kids? Perhaps if your child really is exceptionally gifted or is learning ESL, but for the majority of kids, this is not the case. We need to make sure that we don't cheat our children out of the only childhood they will have just because something is convenient for us.

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Well-researched look at women's place in the workforce

In this book, Peskowitz examines the supposed war between working moms and sat-at-home moms and concludes that it's a war perpetuated by the media rather than an actual one. She then explores the nature of work in America and argues that most moms lack real choice in their working decisions.

She provides examples of stay-at-home moms who would like to work part-time but cannot find work worth their time. She shares the stories of other moms who want to stay home with their kids but simply cannot afford it. Comparing America to 170 other countries, she concludes that America is far behind in valuing the work that mothers do every day in raising their children and that the country needs to begin valuing this work.

She also shows that this difficulty goes beyond class lines. While women in higher-powered jobs may have more choice, they, too, have to fight for flexible working conditions and often "opt out" of the workforce because no suitable choices exist for them.

This book is easy to read and is well researched. In debunking the existence of the mommy wars, Peskowitz urges *all* moms to stand together in order to start making change happen in this country.

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Mommy Dearest.....

On a beautiful early evening at a beach I saw 2,3, and 4 years olds playing a baby world cup game. I was delighted to see such youngsters so engaged in a sport like mini-adults. However, children are not mini-adults. They are fragile kids in need of 100% supervision and dedication. In fact, I was amazed at how into the sport these little tykes were ... focused and aware ... it was a joy to watch. Now for the scary part ... some of the soccer parents were my age and (ghast) younger, like barely into their late 20's. At that moment I knew kids were not for me because .... I instantly wanted to hop on a plane for New York and skip along Broadway singing "It's ain't me Babe, it ain't me whose chained to the floor. Thank GOD I am single and childless!"

Mommy wars against each other now? Used to be mothers against non-mothers. Who said being selfish was just for single women? This is a bigger issue ... it's women against women with one holding her reproductive uterus hostage over another,playing the trump card that another is incomplete because she is baggage-free. Children are precious gifts (especially healthy and smart ones) and if a woman knows she can't live up to the demand and is not willing to sign her life away ... she has every right to say no to reproduction. Why harm another young life when you are not cut out to be a mother other than in the biological sense. Being a mother means you not only give birth but you are 100% emotionally available to your child.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

The media, from Dr. Phil to the New York Times Magazine, is adamant that there is no love lost between working parents and those who stay home with their children, each fighting an ideological and economic war based on what they think is best for their children. Yet in reality, as Miriam Peskowitz powerfully discloses, parents don't want to fight one another at all; they simply want more options. Moreover, the very sides in this debate don't exist: one third of all mothers work part-time, falling into the vast abyss between full-time careerist and at-home mommy. How does the corporate climate in America force women to claim either a career or a family at any given time? Are the choices women are making?to either adjust careers, "carousel" in and out of the workplace, or quit altogether?really choices at all? And how do we expand the definition of productive worker to include an engaged parent? These questions and more are answered and explored in this moving and convincing treatise on the new-century collision between work and mothering.

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