Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This is a reprint of her other Get to Work book, June 23, 2007
I ordered this book because I thought it was a follow-up to her first book "Get to Work: A Manifesto for the Women of the World". It isn't. It's the same book, printed with a slightly different title. If you order Amazon's joint offering of her books, you will get two copies of the same book, with different titles and cover art. The original book was thought-provoking but elitist and somewhat dry. You would be better served purchasing Leslie Bennetts' book "The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?", which addresses the issues raised in the Hirshman book in a more relatable and readable fashion.
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43 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Same book - different subtitle, June 29, 2007
The new subtitle goes for a more practical appeal to her audience rather than the overtly political subtitle of the hardcover edition. So, I provide my review of the hardcover edition of the book with the slight change by adding this paragraph and a couple of other tweaks.
Hirshman called the hardcover edition a manifesto and a manifesto is by definition a political work rather than a philosophical one. It lays out principles to explain past and future actions. Here, the author lays out her dream of a revitalized militant feminism from the Betty Friedan wing and apparently holds Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" to be a kind of modern scripture (she refers to it reverentially quite often in this booklet). She considers Gloria Steinam too right wing and Naomi Wolf only a "so-called feminist", so you have to travel pretty far left to be where she is coming from.
Hirshman wrote an article for "The American Prospect" entitled "Homeward Bound" that received a great deal of attention. Hirshman delighted in the unexpected notoriety. That it was mostly negative encouraged her into believing that she had hit a nerve and that the vitriol was masking an undercurrent of insecurity.
What is this all about? The author hates the idea of well educated professional women leaving the workforce to raise their children. For her, this is all but a wasted life and demeaning to women as a sex. The attention that article has received has convinced her that there is a counter-backlash and that a revitalized sixties feminism is about to arise and shake the world. This book is the manifesto of that movement.
I did find one thing I agree with her about. It does seem to me that the way married couples are taxed nowadays is unfair and that people should have the right to file separately or as a married couple depending on which is better for them (although the latter half of this is only my view).
In a June 18, 2006 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Hirshman says, "Okay, I'm judgmental. That's what CBS's Lesley Stahl called me on "60 Minutes." But I'm a philosopher, and it's a philosopher's job to tell people how they should lead their lives. We've been doing so since Socrates." Well, no. A philosopher is a lover of the truth. It isn't really a job. A philosopher invites others to consider and reconsider by using reason. In fact, the title is something like the title of economist or musician or poet; it is something others call you. If you have to draw attention to your work by claiming the title, you are likely not one. It is sort of the opposite of the poker rule of suckers. If you sit down at a table and everyone doesn't see you as a philosopher, you aren't one. Oh, and by the way, a person who goes around "telling other people how they should live their lives" is really just a busybody.
Hirshman's view is admittedly elitist, but in a curiously work-slave form. For her, the only life worth living is the highly paid - all consuming professional one. In the book, she considers staying at home kissing boo-boos (her phrase - as if that is all there is to raising children into wonderful people) unworthy of a woman who has a professional degree from one of the elite universities. And she uses the standard leftist escape hatch (since Marx), that anyone who thinks differently than her has a false sense of reality (the old false consciousness nonsense) and any choice you think you made is really only equivalent to a hostage making a choice with a gun to her head. Really? Wow.
Admittedly, I grew up in a working class world. My Mom worked in a factory most of my life and my Dad worked construction. They told the four of us kids that they worked to provide a better life for us than they knew growing up in the teeth of the Depression. I never saw the world of the elite wealthy until I taught their children piano in their homes in my twenties. When my wife and I were married I was working the afternoon shift ten hours a day six days a week (only eight on Saturday) on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company and practicing four to six hours a day on my piano preparing to audition at the University of Michigan (I had previously done a year at Michigan State in music right out of high school). My wife worked hard for a mortgage firm. Not all lives "worth living" or lives that "flourish" come easily, regardless of the sex of the person living that life. As an aside: she advocates that professional women only have one child. How is not even replacing yourself in the gene pool a serious definition of flourishing? Extinction is really the better choice?
In my reading of American History (quite different than the Socialist trajectory of Europe), it is the private lives of our Citizens that is the reality. We are all supposed to create lives for ourselves that we find meaningful. The public sector exists as a means for exchange and political discourse. It is not the definer of our lives nor is it the source of worth. Yes, you can use your participation in that sphere as a portion or even all of your personal sense of being and worth. But your desires are not incumbent upon anyone else. The notion that we owe our lives to society and to someone else's notion of betterment comes from outside our shores and is foolish beyond measure.
Right off the bat, on page four, Hirshman lists five points in her "Strategic Plan To Get To Work". The first is: "Don't Study Art. Use Your Education To Prepare For A Lifetime of Work." I mean, what is that? My undergraduate degree is in music theory and piano. And I have a lifetime of work behind me. The whole purpose of a liberal arts education (so out of date in our education-as-certification society) was that it prepared free people to live a life of rich meaning. Art is one avenue to that enrichment. It seems awfully strange to close off such a path to life just to become yet one more lawyer or business professional.
She then decries the old saw that says that on their deathbed no one wishes they had spent more time at the office. She points to Mozart as an example of someone whose work was so meaningful that a life devoted to his work was more important than family life. Of course, we have no such testimony from Mozart himself, his wife, or his sons. However, even if you grant her that point for this exception of an exception of an exception (you only get a few Mozart types per planet), don't you find it delicious that she pointed to an artist as her proof text?
Since she felt free to make her comment about art, let me share what I have learned in my dozen years of college education earning a Bachelor of Music and an MBA from an elite public university. There is no course of study at any university with the word STUDIES in it that is a serious academic discipline. They are all political advocacy programs masquerading as intellectual pursuits and subsidized with the taxes of people who have no say in whether those politics should be taught to their children using their money. If you want to become truly educated, avoid these courses and programs. If you want to play politics, then study away in studies programs and preach your politics. Just don't delude yourself into thinking of yourself as a serious scientist or academic thinker.
The narcissistic solipsism (no, this is not redundant) of this tract is a great example of why one should avoid these otherwise obscure and impotent individuals.
I realize that as a male I will be prejudicially disqualified as a commentator. However, I have been married for thirty years, my wife and I have had six children together, and we have arranged our lives in such a way so we can work together and spend as much time with our children as we can. For us, it is all about the family and our children are showing those values as they mature and live their own lives. Work is to supply the means for life. Certainly, you can choose any path that interests you. This is America, after all. But not all paths lead equally to happiness. Being a professional in a cubical farm or in a dingy office (or even a well appointed one) is often necessary to provide for one's life, but makes a very poor substitute for living one. Just a little example. Recently, my youngest daughter was able to be the assistant stage manager while my youngest son and I sang in the chorus and my wife helped queue and shepherd the children's chorus in a very nice local production of La Boheme. This year we were all on stage in the chorus for La Traviata. Now, I ask you, how much is that worth? A lot more than the 100 hour weeks I worked for a couple of years. These same two kids of ours have the benefit of working on their karate with their mother and all three are have earned their second degree black belt and are now working towards their third degree. Don't think that the years of work it takes to get that are a cake walk!
Let me phrase it another way. When you die, your place of work will replace you and then forget you. All your work will be superceded. Whether you are an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, or anything else, all your work will likely be forgotten (excepting the Newton and Shakespeare types) and all your skills made obsolete. Your house will become the property of someone else, and nearly all your posessions will become landfill. The only thing you really leave behind is what is in the hearts of your children and what they value and pass on to theirs. Any other ideas of value and permanence here on earth are almost always an illusion.
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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Poorly argued, July 11, 2008
For a tract written by someone who is a self-styled "philosopher," this is terribly argued. A few points worth noting:
"Don't study art," she says, pointing to Frida Kahlo as the only cautionary tale. What is life without the arts? After civilzations and societies are gone, it is their creative endeavors that endure. In our culture, in fact, it is in the arts that women can really shine and even make the big bucks!
She tries to examine why the gay movement has done "so well," while the feminist movement has fizzled. What planet does she live on? HIV/Aids is on the rise again, gays have marital rights in only two states, while so many others have actually passed anti-gay marriage resolutions, and we still have don't ask, don't tell.
Telling us exactly how to live, she so benevolently allows educated women one child, because having none is too sad and having more is too crazy. Great. So you must create a family in which the future adult, after the parents pass on, will have little extended family other than possibly their own little nuclear family.
She spends little or no time on the fact that our culture provides scant support for working women of all educational backgrounds or abilities. That's why it's necessary to make such painful choices. Working 10 to 12 hour days when you have children just makes life too crazy and too much of an all or nothing choice. What about the dads? A lot of them have become more helpful, but it's usually too little.
She fails to note the exploitative nature of the job of full-time nanny. Just do some google searches, the articles are everywhere. Don't you think it's sad that someone has to leave their own children behind in a third world country to be paid to love someone else's children?
There are lots of other points but this is enough. And no, this was not written by a "SAHM" but by a dedicated feminist. Hirschman just makes weak arguments and offers no practical solutions such as excellent on-site day care, job sharing when children are young, getting men more involved. And I'm also tired of these kinds of books that view cultural issues entirely from a white, upper-middle class or affluent lens.
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