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What's a Smart Woman Like You Doing at Home?
A very interesting read
174 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 1, 2011
This book is a little outdated as it was written in the 80's and some of the cultural/societal pressures to be working vs. staying at home have changed, but it was still a nice read and a good little pick me up when needed to remind me why I feel it is so important to be home with my daughter.
July 31, 2009
The essays in this book are really well done. Of course it is addressed toward the stay-at-home-mom, so if you are looking for support toward parents who juggle career and parenting...this book is NOT for you. However I found some of the ways of looking at things very enlightening. It elevates the role of a stay-at-home parent such that you don't feel like you are "giving up" your career rather embracing another.
May 18, 2017
2.75 stars. Outdated, and inherently less useful in these days of social networking that allows like-minded people to connect and support one another. However, if you enjoy reading and want some reassurance about your choices, you may still value the read. My husband and I read and discussed the Bad Days essay together and it was a valuable talking point.
February 11, 2017
Dated and of mixed usefulness to me, but thinking over what resonated and didn't actually helped me clarify my own feelings, so that's good!
July 27, 2018
This book is not what I expected. I appreciated so much authors assurance I can choose to do work where I want to--even at home-- because as a woman I should have the power to choose for myself.
February 9, 2019
Even though I only gave this book three stars, it's one that I continue to think about a lot.
It's not an incredible work of scholarship or an insightful treatise on "educated" women making the decision to stay home with their children, but what it did provide me with, even almost 30 years after it was written and all the children referenced in it are probably grown with children of their own, was a sense of community and validation -- that I was not the only woman in the world who was doing this even though it tends to feel like that as I raise my son in the state with the lowest number of stay-at-home parents in the nation (who would've thunk it of South Dakota?)
So I felt a sense of connection and camaraderie with these women that I will never meet; the book awakened with me a sense of my own true yearnings for the way I'd like my life as a parent to unfold, and it was valuable in cementing that insight even as I'm still hesitant about acting on it all else considered. It glosses over a lot of the systemic issues that come with the decision to take time off from a career, such as the difficulty of getting back in. The fact that it is a generation old at this point was frustrating on two levels -- there were whole chapters about "current statistics" that I just sort of glazed over because I knew they were not at all current; but at the same time, SO many of the issues this book hopes to address and correct are still so, so, so far from being resolved in our culture (although some of them, like child safety seats in shopping carts, are happily commonplace). In particular, I love the idea of parents receiving some sort of childcare "stipend" that they can either apply to outsourcing childcare if they choose to work or that they can keep to offset the lost income when one parent chooses to undertake the majority of childcare duties. This seems a far superior state-sponsored "solution" than universal free childcare or the like, which assumes all parents want to stay in the workforce full-time when they have children.
It's a testament to the berth of good resources for this demographic that I had to reach back so many years for this one.
PopSugar Reading Challenge Item: A book mentioned in another book (this one is referenced in "The Truth About the Mommy Wars"
It's not an incredible work of scholarship or an insightful treatise on "educated" women making the decision to stay home with their children, but what it did provide me with, even almost 30 years after it was written and all the children referenced in it are probably grown with children of their own, was a sense of community and validation -- that I was not the only woman in the world who was doing this even though it tends to feel like that as I raise my son in the state with the lowest number of stay-at-home parents in the nation (who would've thunk it of South Dakota?)
So I felt a sense of connection and camaraderie with these women that I will never meet; the book awakened with me a sense of my own true yearnings for the way I'd like my life as a parent to unfold, and it was valuable in cementing that insight even as I'm still hesitant about acting on it all else considered. It glosses over a lot of the systemic issues that come with the decision to take time off from a career, such as the difficulty of getting back in. The fact that it is a generation old at this point was frustrating on two levels -- there were whole chapters about "current statistics" that I just sort of glazed over because I knew they were not at all current; but at the same time, SO many of the issues this book hopes to address and correct are still so, so, so far from being resolved in our culture (although some of them, like child safety seats in shopping carts, are happily commonplace). In particular, I love the idea of parents receiving some sort of childcare "stipend" that they can either apply to outsourcing childcare if they choose to work or that they can keep to offset the lost income when one parent chooses to undertake the majority of childcare duties. This seems a far superior state-sponsored "solution" than universal free childcare or the like, which assumes all parents want to stay in the workforce full-time when they have children.
It's a testament to the berth of good resources for this demographic that I had to reach back so many years for this one.
PopSugar Reading Challenge Item: A book mentioned in another book (this one is referenced in "The Truth About the Mommy Wars"
February 7, 2013
This book is a bit out-dated, and it's rather self-congratulatory. Let all stay-at-home-moms pat themselves on the back.
But still, this is a useful message. There is nothing that can explain the incredible out-pouring of love that a child creates in his mother, but this book and the essays in it come close.
It does a good job of highlighting the reasons women might choose to stay at home and clearly refutes that it is a backwards choice or somehow not truly in the interests of the woman herself.
But still, this is a useful message. There is nothing that can explain the incredible out-pouring of love that a child creates in his mother, but this book and the essays in it come close.
It does a good job of highlighting the reasons women might choose to stay at home and clearly refutes that it is a backwards choice or somehow not truly in the interests of the woman herself.
December 6, 2007
Nothing terribly profound, but it provided me with validation at a time when I really needed it.
April 2, 2009
I love this book. It's explains exactly why I want to be at home.
July 18, 2011
Saved me from going "crazy" my first year as a new stay at home mom !
February 17, 2014
I read it in the 80s, but I still remember that it was useful and validating for me.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews