Customer Reviews

Not Guilty: The Good News About Working Mothers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a man with a capital M and I liked the book. Holcomb has balls for laying it all on the table. In this day of Lewinskis and Wonder Bras, it is good to know that feminists aren't hiding.

I am a working mom, and had to put this down after struggling through 100 pages or so. I was looking for a careful, respectful, reasonable analysis of the effects, if any, of working moms on children. What I got was an angry book of the author's outrage at various messages sent to working moms and college age women about "sacrifices". She does have a point that the debate about whether or not two income families hurt kids has been mostly conducted without real research and facts. Unfortunately, she just seems to add to this. I bought this because one editorial review said that she did include research results. If she did, I couldn't find them in the first 100 pages, and lost the ability to wade through her anger to get to any later ones.

I have read many books about parenting. Some are in support of the stay at home mom and others support the working mom. The fact that many of us need to read
books like this to feel good about the choices we make seems to say that this is a controversial issue with no easy right answer. Not Guilty, is a book
written to make to income families feel good about their choice. Other books are written to make stay at home moms feel good about their choice. People will
believe what they want to believe about this debatable issue. Make the choice for yourself. Do what is correct for your children and family. If that means working, by
all means work. If that means staying home with your young children, be all means stay home with your children (at least while they are young and not school age). I
am in support of all loving parents that really make an effort to create good lives for their children. While keeping your children and family in mind, make the right
choice for your circumstances. I think books like this are for the most part pointless. They are written to make the authors feel good about their choices whatever
they may be. It is also written to justify the choices that author has made. However if you are reading this book to support the choices you have made, that is fine
too. We all need to feel supported especially when confronting difficult decisions like this one regarding our families and lifestyle.

I tried to read this book, but had to stop after 4-5 chapters because I felt that Ms. Holcomb was too biased for working mothers and against the "traditional" SAHM. I work full-time outside the home in sales & marketing and hate it. But at the same time I don't want to be a full-time SAHM mom. Certainly I need more time with my daughter, but I also need the intellectual stimulation, adult contact & social stimlation that work provides. I would like to be able to work part-time or do a job share, but this society just doesn't go for that. I also feel that my daughter needs the stimulation and contact that daycare provides her. She would tire of being with me constantly; she does when we have long holiday weekends. When we are home for 3 or more days together, I find it hard to entertain her and do housework, cooking, etc. Thank goodness that I have a supportive husband who devotes as much time to our daughter as I do.

Holcomb does a compelling job of weaving statistics, history, and anecdotes to present a clear picture of the many creative ways women deal with kids and work. Her chapter 10 on women's paychecks is a real eye opener. I don't think women realize how much they co-opt themselves regarding their worth. It is a book to make your blood boil and give you hope. I know, I am a single mom.

This book is tight from start to finish. The research isthorough, the conclusions sound, the insights fresh, and the writingprecise. When I first picked up the book I was tempted to read the chapters out of order and, in fact, I did. I jumped right into chapters five and six about pregnancy discrimination and workplace hostility toward mothers with young children. With stories from working mothers, attorneys and court records, Holcomb shows that "women face a fierce and persistent prejudice once they become mothers." These chapters resonated with me, so I decided to start at the beginning and work my way through. What I found was that each chapter reinforces the arguments of the previous chapter and establishes the foundation for the next. While the fourteen chapters draw on many of the same sources to make their points, the book does not feel at all repetitive. As I reached the final chapters I found myself likening Holcomb's approach to the work of a gemologist. After putting the cut gem under the bright light, the gemologist slowly turns it around, examining each facet to learn as much as possible about the condition, history and value of the stone. In the same way, Holcomb considers the working mother, looking at the political, economic and social aspects of her life in order to speak with both authority and compassion about the guilt that working mothers need not feel. As I put the book down, sorry that I had come to the end, I felt there was one more chapter Holcomb could have written. This generation of women is restructuring the workplace, not by moving up the corporate ladder but by kicking it away and rock climbing! Many women, fed up with the slow pace of change in corporations, have confidently ventured out on their own. The National Foundation for Women Business Owners reports that the number of women-owned firms rose by 78 percent between 1987 and 1996, twice the pace of overall business growth. Employment by and revenues from women-owned firms have risen dramatically in the last decade. In 1996, women owned 36 percent of all U.S. businesses. This is also good news about working mothers and needs to be part of the larger analysis.

I am a working mom, and had to put this down after struggling through 100 pages or so. I was looking for a careful, respectful, reasonable analysis of the effects, if any, of working moms on children. What I got was an angry book of the author's outrage at various messages sent to working moms and college age women about "sacrifices". She does have a point that the debate about whether or not two income families hurt kids has been mostly conducted without real research and facts. Unfortunately, she just seems to add to this. I bought this because one editorial review said that she did include research results. If she did, I couldn't find them in the first 100 pages, and lost the ability to wade through her anger to get to any later ones.

Ms. Holcomb uses an age old tactic of blaming others for one's own moral and ethical dilemmas. Women who choose to have children are being told that they are victims and that ALL men seek to dominate and restrict them. All of this is presented in a series of disjointed chapters.