Posted in book reviews

I've been wanting to blog about this book since I devoured it in early July.  So my goal for the day (besides keep 12 children alive and somewhat happy - I am watching a friend's 6 as well as my 6) is to finally get this done so I can get it out of my head.

The subtitle is "Are We Giving Up Too Much?"  Her basic argument is that staying at home with your children without paid employment is putting yourself in financial peril.  She has an interesting way of trying to get the women to whom she's speaking to listen to her: she insinuates that they are idiots, insults them, and tries to make them believe that their husbands are going to leave them the second they get the chance.  If their husbands aren't actually scum, they are going to die and leave them penniless (it appears Ms. Bennetts has never heard of life insurance or disability insurance.  I kept waiting for her to mention these seemingly obvious things but she never did.) It seems like every SAHM she talks to lives in NY with a millionaire husband (who controls all the money) and only has shopping on her mind.  I didn't think much of these women, and I have been a SAHM for 11 years!

So what is her solution?  We should all work full-time all the time.  Ms. Bennetts is proud that her career track "looks like a man's" in that she has never taken more than a weekend off between jobs.  Children's lives should be enhanced by quality caregivers (somehow she has been able to keep the same nanny her children's entire lives).  She thinks women underestimate how easy it is to return to the work force.

The book makes a few totally indisputable, valid points.  The main one is that you will never be able to make up the income and career growth that would have happened had you stayed in the work force.  That is true - I can't.  If I had taken another 3 or 4 years to get my PhD, making about $10,000 a year, and then gotten a tenure track position, making around $40,000 a year, by this time I would have earned about $300,000.  I would have enough Social Security credits to receive benefits in my own name. My family would receive death benefits if I died. If I had tenure, I would have guaranteed income the rest of my career.  Since I stayed home, I have nothing like that.

A second point I found intriguing was that a family's income largely determines the opportunities the children have, so increasing the income through the wife working may actually help.  There is some validity to that argument. Of course, I don't know who will be available to take the children to their increased opportunities - oh, that's right, the devoted nanny who never leaves, gets married, or has children of her own.

My overwhelming issue with this book, besides the disparaging tone and sheer repetitiveness, is that Baby Boomer feminist obsession with "careers."  Many people do not have careers, they have jobs.  Work is not some be-all, end-all for most people.  They work because they have to.  And most work is so un-family friendly even to fathers.  My husband took two weeks off after our fourth child was born, using the FMLA legislation.  The hospital keep bugging him and the midwife for a "start date" to his leave.  Of course, we did not know what day the baby would be born, and I wasn't about to induce to get rid of their anxiety.  My husband had so much vacation and sick time piled up at the hospital that he could have taken months off, but then he wouldn't have had a job.  And it was very good that he did pursue taking the leave through FMLA, because when he left that job a year and a half later, he was paid for all his unused vacation time.

Another thing that Bennetts never addresses is why continuing alimony is no longer given.  I have read before how the push for no fault divorces has led to women being shortchanged.  It used to be that if your husband left you for a trophy wife, he still had to support you and the children.  Equitable divorce law would go a long way to addressing this issue.  But to Bennetts, the only thing that will help any of this is if mothers work full-time all the time.

She never addresses finding quality child care, or that fact that studies have shown that many parents prefer their children be cared for by the mother or father, and then after that trusted friends and relatives, and then after that, nannies at their own house, and then after that, family daycares, and then after that, institutionalized day care. She does address paying for it, however, by saying that even if your entire salary is paying for the (of doubtful) quality childcare, it's an investment in the future, when childcare costs go down as your children need less care.  A commenter on Amazon.com (yes, I read every comment) even went so far as to suggest that women should continue working even if child care costs more than their salary.  However, this commenter failed to explain exactly how she envisioned that working out practically.  Should the mother go into debt by putting it on her credit card, or expect her husband to pay for it? Putting it on the credit card jeopardizes her financial future (which is supposedly what she is trying to avoid by working in the first place) and relying on her husband is apparently a big no-no.

Bennetts says that she knows that working full-time and having children is stressful to the max, but, don't worry, it only lasts for 15 years.  "Instead of feeling that you're going crazy and you can't stand it anymore, try to look at it as a fifteen-year marathon."  Is this comforting?  Does anyone really hear that and say, "Oh, no big deal, I can do this for fifteen years."  I'm 36, and 15 years is nearly half my life so far.  And this advice doesn't even apply to me, since I have been in "intensive parenting" phase for 18 years already, and since I have nearly 2 year old twins, I will be in it for at least another 10 or 12, if I didn't homeschool.  That adds up to 30 years, not 15.  However, Bennetts isn't talking to women [insert negative word here] enough to have 6 children. 

Another issue Bennetts has is that women underestimate how easy it will be to get back into the workforce.  What I don't understand is why she thinks working full-time is some kind of insurance for job security.  Has she not heard of lay-offs, downsizing, bankruptcies, and plain old firings?  Does she not know that even older people who have been continuously employed have trouble finding jobs sometimes?  I looked for a full-time job earlier this year when it seemed that my husband might not be able to find one.  I applied for 9 full-time positions and did not receive any calls or interviews.  However, I did get three part-time jobs with no trouble at all (substitute teacher, continuing education German teacher, and high school Spanish teacher).  I would think that someone with more work experience than me could find a job.  Actually, I am pretty sure that I could get a full-time job teaching high school languages right now, but that isn't what I want to do long-term so I don't want to pursue that now. After this school year is over, I will have a year's experience teaching Spanish, a master's in German, and 18 graduate credits in Spanish.  I hope to be able to get a full-time college teaching position.

Well, this has taken me all day, so I think I will stop here.  If I think of anything else I wanted to say, I'll just write another post!