A Mother's Place : Taking the Debate About Working Mothers Beyond Guilt and Blame
Mothers all across America are caught in a maelstrom of guilt and anxiety, torn between their devotion to their children and their fears about economic security. A Mother's Place , written by a leading New York Times journalist and mother of two, is the book they have been waiting to read -- one that exposes the backlash against working mothers in our culture yet acknowledges their own ambivalence about the new lives they are leading. Evolving from a series of front-page articles Susan Chira wrote for the New York Times , A Mother's Place leads all mothers to safe ground. Drawing on her own experience as a mother and worker, and on interviews with dozens of mothers across the country, Chira writes with passion and compassion about motherhood in the nineties. A Mother's Place is at once a devestating expose of the distortions that have wrongfully convinced many women that good mothers stay at home, and an engaging personal account of how women can rewrite the rules of motherhood and defy the experts by striking the balance that best suits them and their children. Controversial, hard-hitting yet written in a warm and accessible style, A Mother's Place speaks to mothers across the country. Whenever working mothers pick up a newspaper or magazine, they hear how their neglect is producing a society of emotionally damaged, even criminal, youth. Chira reviews the latest scientific research to show that children of working mothers turn out just as well as those raised by mothers at home. She shows how the media, the courts and politicans have distorted this data to suit their own agendas. The reality that most experts have chosen to ignore is how much a mother's happiness, satisfaction and emotional state affect her child. Chira argues that society is trapped in the wrong debate, because whether or not a woman works is not a principal factor in determing how good a mother she is. She presents a new vision of motherhood, one that offers reassurance while insisting that all of us -- mothers, fathers and society -- fulfill our obligations to our children.