Opting Out?: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home [Paperback]

Pamela Stone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2008

Noting a phenomenon that might seem to recall a previous era, The New York Times Magazine recently portrayed women who leave their careers in order to become full-time mothers as "opting out." But, are high-achieving professional women really choosing to abandon their careers in order to return home? This provocative study is the first to tackle this issue from the perspective of the women themselves. Based on a series of candid, in-depth interviews with women who returned home after working as doctors, lawyers, bankers, scientists, and other professions, Pamela Stone explores the role that their husbands, children, and coworkers play in their decision; how women's efforts to construct new lives and new identities unfold once they are home; and where their aspirations and plans for the future lie. What we learn--contrary to many media perceptions--is that these high-flying women are not opting out but are instead being pushed out of the workplace. Drawing on their experiences, Stone outlines concrete ideas for redesigning workplaces to make it easier for women--and men--to attain their goal of living rewarding lives that combine both families and careers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Opting out," "off-ramping" and "following the mommy track" are all popular terms to describe professional women who leave their jobs to be stay-at-home moms. But do they describe the truth of the matter? Stone, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, set out to answer this question after discovering that there was no research on the matter; perceptions of these women were shaped almost exclusively by the media. Stone conducted in-depth interviews with 54 women: white women who had been highly successful professionals and were married to men who could support them while they stayed at home—i.e., women who had a "choice." What Stone found was fascinating and surprising: women quit because of work, not family, and only as a last resort: "They have been unsuccessful in their efforts to find flexibility or... because they found themselves marginalized and stigmatized, negatively reinforced for trying to hold onto their careers after becoming mothers." These women were abandoning "all-or-nothing" workplaces where the demands were so unrelenting that, as one mutual fund trader put it, "there were days when I couldn't get up from my desk to go to the bathroom." Stone's revealing study adds an important counterpoint to Leslie Bennetts's forthcoming The Feminine Mistake. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"A highly worthwhile book."--American Journal of Sociology / Ajs

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (June 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520256573
• ISBN-13: 978-0520256576
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A nicely balanced look at the pros and cons of opting out, with real examples August 1, 2007

By K. Corn TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

What I particularly liked about this book: Stone's interviews and discussions with actual women who decided to opt out of working (even though many of them could have made big bucks) as well as her solid research.

Readers should be aware that the author, by her own admission (p. 15 of the book), focused on white married women with children and that these women had previously worked as managers or professionals. If you don't fall into that group, this book may not appeal to you. These women, for the most part, also had husbands who could support their decision to stay home.In short, these women often had expensive college degrees and were high achievers.

Stone also points out that women who tend to "opt out" are the exception, not the rule, citing studies that indicate that 70 percent of the women who are married mothers of preschoolers still continue to work. Turn this figure around and the reality is that one out of every four women DOES decide to stay home. This book is an exploration of these particular women and it is written in what I found to be a very nonjudgmental and open style.

The author was also able to get some company heads to admit their mixed feelings about mothers in the workplace, their fears about them being less committed to their jobs or more likely to quit.

Other areas covered in this book include:
Most women quit only as a last resort (p. 18)

Each woman's story was unique, often complex and with many factors.

There was often ambivalence and a shifting of roles within the home

Their decision did NOT signal a return to traditionalism (p. 19)....

Their former workplaces often made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to continue balancing family and work, rejecting their attempts to create innovations while maintaining productivity.

If you'd like to know what is featured in each Chapter, here's a quick rundown:
Chapter 1 - Looks at various women (the former Ivy League sports star, the CPA, the Consultant, an editor, a stock trader, etc) and their various experiences at work.

Chapter 2- 3- Looks at the families, children and husbands.

Chapter 4- Focuses on work, problems and challenges and factors that lead to a decision to opt out.

Chapters 6-8 - Life at home, coping techniques, finding new identities.

Chapter 9- Explores possible ways that women could continue to work (if they chose) and minimizing the obstacles that make staying home a necessity, not a choice. Read more ›

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From "choice" to culture, the full picture of the "opt-out" phenomenon May 23, 2007

By Amy Tiemann VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"Opting Out?" provides a clear-eyed look at the lives of stay-at-home mothers. Sociologist Pamela Stone conducted extensive interviews with 54 women to trace their life-career paths. This research is just what was needed to shine a fresh light on this often-divisive topic. Through interviews and her own analysis, Stone creates a coherent narrative that explores the joys, challenges, and social context of the opt-out phenomenon.

Her results are more nuanced than the "did we jump or were we pushed out?" sound bites you'll hear so often, even used to summarize this book. "Opting Out?" covers the private joys and difficulties of this path, the workforce pushes and family pulls, and the larger societal changes that need to happen to accommodate the needs of working parents. By telling the stories of women who have experienced the trade-offs of career off-ramping, "Opting Out?" presents a full picture with empathy and without blaming, shaming or sentimentalizing the mothers who participated in the study.

Stone presents a brilliant analysis that deconstructs the idea of "choice" while acknowledging that women want to be agents in their own lives. In other words, she understands the limitations of "choice," since women are choosing within a constrained social framework, but she also understands why women want to stand by the interpretation that they have individually chosen their life paths, even as they are reacting to a larger social system.

I had many a-ha moments in reading "Opting Out?" and Stone's findings have made a difference in my own thinking. Finally, here is an illuminating book that is grounded in solid research and avoids the sting of the culture wars.

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really applicable to us "normal folks" June 7, 2008

By A. Stiteler

Format:Hardcover

Although it seems that the author really did her homework, the bottom line is that the subjects in this book are super high earning and super high acheiving women married to even higher acheiving/earning husbands. The study itself is fascinating and I'm sure that many of the home "pull" and workplace "push" factors apply to women of all income, education, and racial/ethnic backgrounds but the bottom line is that these were women who could AFFORD to stay home seemingly without making any compromises in their lifestyles. I was more interested in learning about average/middle class families, with moms who ended up staying home even with great consequence to their socioeconomic status, as is the case with many moms who choose to stay at home. I mean, this book is talking about women married to high-powered Wall Street investment bankers, women who are CEO's and stockbrokers themselves...sorry, but these women could afford to stay home. What was so groundbreaking about that? "Feminine Mistake" was much more in tune with the "real world" types of lifestyles and it went across economic and racial lines, something that this book does not do. Plus, it made for a somewhat dry and boring read.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No Opting without Options May 10, 2007

By Deborah Siegel

Format:Hardcover

Brava to Pamela Stone! Women -- and workplaces -- need this book. Instead of focusing reductively on women's "choices" (who has choices when alternatives are limited?), Stone charts the institutional obstacles and cultural pressures that leave even the most advantaged women feeling pushed out. Stone writes as a sociologist, a scholar of women's careers, and a mother. Instead of blaming women, imploring us to "get back to work" (a la Linda Hirschman) or warning us (Leslie Bennetts-style) that we're all making a dastardly mistake, her message is one that, as a Gen Xer staring into the crosshairs of burgeoning career and potential motherhood, is far more palatable to hear.

Stone lets her subjects -- mothers in their 30s and 40s who "time out" from professional careers -- describe their trajectories in unstructured interviews, giving voice to a group we have heard much about but have not heard. She lambasts the media for sensationalizing our so-called mass exodus -- which, in truth, is not so massive and reflects neither a sea-change in values among feminism's daughters nor the modernization of the feminine mystique.

Opting Out? fills a void -- virtually no real research has been done before on women leaving careers -- and it's the question mark in the title that propels the book. Loaded with facts and real data, the introduction alone is worth the price.