Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Family, and Career [Hardcover]

Laraine T. Zappert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2001

Career or motherhood? Do you have to sacrifice one to be truly successful in the other? And if you're trying to do both, will you have to compromise your career path or your child's needs? With professional demands increasingly impinging on personal time, is "having it all" even realistic, or is it just plain fantasy?

Now leading Stanford University psychologist Dr. Laraine Zappert, who specializes in the issues of women and work, draws upon her twenty years of clinical and research experience and a landmark study to answer these questions and create a road map of innovative solutions. Dr. Zappert surveyed more than three hundred women who have graduated from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and has incorporated case studies from hundreds of women professionals in each chapter. Her findings address such common concerns as:

Do I really have to choose between career and family?

How do I handle the stresses of my job and the demands of parenting?

How do children affect my career, and when is the best time to have them?

How do I keep my relationships healthy?

Who will care for my children when I'm not available?

Coming from many different occupational backgrounds, the subjects of Dr. Zappert's study show us that although we so often think that everyone else is doing it better and having an easier time of it, that is hardly ever the case. Sometimes "good enough" has to do. And whereas the stresses may be the same for all working women, the solutions rarely are. Let the insights, advice, and strategies found in "Getting It Right" help you make smarter, more informed decisions for creating a satisfying andfulfilling lifestyle on every level.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A clinical psychologist and working mother, Laraine Zappert interviewed 300 Stanford University Business School graduates to prepare her well-organized and optimistic book, Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Family, and Career. Offering hard-won insights from women who've faced down these issues, she guides readers through decisions about such crucial issues as timing the birth of their children, allocating housework, evaluating various work arrangements and lining up support. Her time-tested solutions for creating a healthy balance between work and home require effort and dedication, though there is much to be gained from them.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

Publishers Weekly [A] well-organized and optimistic book. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 278 pages
• Publisher: Atria; 1st edition (February 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671041800
• ISBN-13: 978-0671041809
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,285,359 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinarily helpful book!, March 13, 2001

By 

Ellen T. Murphy (Lowell, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Family, and Career (Hardcover)

Getting it Right offered me exactly what I was looking for at just the right time. It gave me insights into what other career-minded mothers who strive for better balance in their lives are going through. The book combines research findings and helpful step by step guides and self-help questionnaires that gave me a great new perspective. Best of all it gave real, hard, current figures about Stanford women MBA's in the workplace. I was amazed to read that 47% are working part time. This is the fifth book I've bought and read in hopes that I would be able to resolve my conflicting feelings about work and raising children. And unlike so many of the books about getting it right with respect to family and work this book has absolutely no religious slant. Thank God. Real research and really insightful ways to analyze your current desires and needs as they relate to balance. I highly recommend this one!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Getting it Right, July 26, 2004

By 

K. Fromal "kristinof" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Family, and Career (Paperback)

In this book, Lorraine Zappert has provided a comprehensive analysis of mother's role in the workplace. Through quantitative research with hundreds of women who have received their MBA's from Stanford University, Zappert provides both research-informed analysis and vignettes from mothers who have made a wide range of choices as applied to child bearing and raising. The book contains both useful tips and items to ponder when making important decisions concerning career paths.

My biggest complaint about this book was that it sometimes drifted into the area of fantasy for most working mothers. Understandably, the research focused upon moms with a very high income potential, but professionals come in many career areas and have a wide range of incomes, and many cannot afford the type of "solutions" suggested by the book, such as a full-time, live-in nanny.

However, I do feel that the book provided very useful information and is an important resource.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not quite what I was looking for, March 20, 2005

By 

Haight Peterson (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Getting It Right: How Working Mothers Successfully Take Up the Challenge of Life, Family, and Career (Paperback)

I liked this book, but I guess I was looking for something more. I was hoping for a few more suggestions on how to be a successful working mother. The biggest thing that I took from this book are that there are advantages and disadvantages to every role that you can have as a mom. (Working mothers sometimes feel that they aren't parenting enough, stay at home moms sometimes feel isolated, and moms who work part time sometimes feel like they aren't doing either thing well).

I thought that it was interesting, but I guess that it just reinforces that trying to balance work and family is something that still generates a lot more questions than it does answers.