by Leslie Morgan Steiner
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Product Description
With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of a woman’s life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not only divides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individual mothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there. As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother of three, she has lived and breathed every side of the “mommy wars.” Rather than just watch the battles rage, Steiner decided to do something about it. She commissioned twenty-six outspoken mothers to write about their lives, their families, and the choices that have worked for them. The result is a frank, surprising, and utterly refreshing look at American motherhood.
Ranging in age from twenty-five to seventy-two and scattered across the country from New Hampshire to California, these mothers reflect the full spectrum of lifestyle choices. Women who have been home with the kids from day one, moms who shuttle from full-time office jobs to part-time at-home work, hard-driving executives who put in seventy-hour-plus weeks: they all get a turn. The one thing these women have in common, aside from having kids, is that they’re all terrific writers.
Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley vividly recounts how her generation stormed the American workplace–only to take refuge at home when the workplace drove them out. Lizzie McGuire creator Terri Minsky describes what it felt like to hear her kids scream “I hope you never come back!” when she flew to L.A. to launch the show that made her career. Susan Cheever, novelist, biographer, and New York Newsday columnist, reports on the furious battles between the stroller pushers and the briefcase bearers on the streets of Manhattan. Lois R. Shea traded the journalistic fast track for a house in the country where she could raise her daughter in peace. Ann Misiaszek Sarnoff, chief operating officer of the Women’s National Basketball Association, argues fiercely that you can combine ambition and motherhood–and have a blast in the process.
Candid, engaging, by turns unflinchingly honest and painfully funny, the essays collected here offer an astonishingly intimate portrait of the state of motherhood today. Mommy Wars is a book by and for and about the real experts on motherhood and hard work: the women at home, in the office, on the job every day of their lives.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Well worth the read and price., 2008-07-29
I bought this book after reading an article that mentioned it. I really enjoyed the book. Each story was interesting, even those I didn't particularly agree with. Whether someone is a stay at home mom, work at home mom or mom working outside the house I think it's something they would enjoy. I found it entertaining and interesting. It's worth the price and the time to read it.
0 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 dumb, disappointing, dated, 2008-01-18
Very excited to read this book. Very big let down. Never really addressed the normal and regular stay at home moms verses working moms with regular jobs. Don't waste your time, if you are a working mom you should not have time to read for pleasure and if you are a stay at home mom you should be reading to your kids.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Surprisingly Conciliatory, 2007-12-06
From the title of the book, you might expect a contentious debate between the two sides of this divisive issue. And if so, you are in for a pleasant surprise. I found that, in general, the writers were trying to reach across the divide and to try and reduce the conflict. One writer put it "Women have to stop fighting among themselves - let's go back to the way it was before - and fight with the men!". While the book presents many different opinions and scenarios, I did find a number of things that stuck with me. In particular, a woman has to make the choice that truly makes her happy. If that means she needs to work, then she is not a bad mother for that choice. Similarly, if a woman wants to stay home for the first few years, that does not make her lazy. It is also clear that good parents are good parents, regardless of the choice that make to work or stay home for those first few years. Women that spend a great deal of their time at work away from their kids just so they can have 20 purses, 100 pairs of shoes, and a brand new Mercedes convertible are just as bad as women who don't work and spend their entire day shopping or hanging out with their friends.
In thinking about this book in the context of "The Feminine Mistake", it appears that the best situation is when a mother has an interesting career that she is able to pursue part-time/from home during the years when the kids are little/small. Then, as the kids grow more independent, the career side can grow accordingly. While this balance isn't easy, it is definitely doable and appears to be the most rewarding and it gives those mothers a good perspective on "both sides". Mothers who don't have a career they enjoy (prior to the baby) would be best served if they found a different career, but all too often the "stay at home mom" career option is too appealing. Sadly, it is temporary and financially risky. Of course, the obvious problem is that it is very hard to find a career that you can do part-time/from home for a number of years. That is, unless you are a writer.
And with that we come to the book's tragic flaw. Every single contributor is a writer. That makes for well written essays (and they are quite well written, humorous, and a delight to read), but it also makes for a very non-representative sample. All of the women were able to cut back on their work - and even the stay-at-home-moms still wrote - after all they wrote these articles! I would have preferred poorer writing quality and a more inclusive sample. If every mom was a writer (or another profession where contract work was prevalent and available) we wouldn't have the "Mommy Wars" issue at all.
Recommended: Mothers, writers, those seeking balance in life and/or trying to understand "the other side" in this debate.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Worthwhile Read, 2007-12-04
Whether it's by luck or by chance that one becomes a mother, one thing is certain, there are a lot of choices to make in how one goes about raising them: stay-at-home...continue to work...work full-time...work part-time...work from home...it's these choices that fuel the elusive mommy wars! The most important thing you can take from this book is that there is no right or wrong choice when it comes to being a parent...the evidence supports nearly ALL arguments...kids who have a stay-at-home parent gain access to certain benefits as do kids whose parents work and utilize daycare of some kind. What makes the difference is choosing what is right for YOU and YOUR family...the happiest mothers are the one's who make the "right" choice (or balance between choices) for who they are and what their goals are.
The Mommy Wars is a collection of 26 essays by well...mothers (with the exception of one essay which was written by a woman not yet a mother). There is a brief bio for each author and while there are some differences between them, for the most part we're talking about women who are more educated than the average mother and nearly all of whom turned a lucrative full-time (well paying) career into a similarly well paid freelance gig (part or full time), most have help (if not from family, they have the means to hire all the help they need) and nearly off of them live on the east (New York heavy) or west coasts with very little hard from the middle states. I understand why publishers want books like this...from women with writing experience, but I'd personally be will to sacrifice some quality of writing to hear more varied points of view, because Mommy Wars was interesting and enlightening, it's also skewed and hangs on the precipice of elitism that will certainly be a big turn-off for some readers.
I think what struck me most about this book is that there isn't really an external "mommy war" and the common themes of this book are spotlighted as these authors turn a spotlight on their own trials, tribulations and tumultuous thoughts on what is right and necessary to raise their children. There is a pretty even split between the stay-at-home and working mother camps (with more than a few that fall somewhere between) and fairly skewers all the most common stereotypes (smug working mom, bored to death stay-at-home mom, holier than thou stay-at-home mom, etc.) and brings to center stage those issues which are really the most important when deciding what is right for you, because what is right for you and your children is what makes you happy...if being at home and dealing with a toddler all day would drive you batty then work and spend happy quality time with your little ones...if working stresses you out and makes you feel inadequate (and you can manage to stay at home without going bananas from the day in and day out routines) then by all means stay at home or work part-time.
In the end, it's clear that this so called Mommy War is not going on "out there..." it's going on inside each woman who chooses motherhood (or has it chosen for her though circumstance). For some the decision to work or stay home is easy, very cut and day. For many...perhaps even most, this decision is heart wrenching, difficult and filled with doubt and worry. The only thing that is certain here is that this is an internal war which will probably never be "won," but it's nice to read the battles that others have engaged in and see them stand by their decisions and "get" that the most important (and often the most hurtful) judgments in the decisions of motherhood come from within. That makes this book worth reading, all by itself. I give it four stars, it's a worthwhile read.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Oh, please!, 2007-11-01
I am reading this book and think I am going to throw up. So far, ALL of these women have pedigree and/or Ivy League degrees. This handful of all the authors glamorous ultra-high achieving friends or friends of friends in no way shape or form speaks for the millions of us who aren't multi-millionaires or make $300,000 a year. I wouldn't want to give that up either. Can someone write a book about normal women?
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