Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family [Paperback]

Dawn Comer Jefferson (Author), Rosanne Welch (Author)

Book Description

Today’s parents are supposed to enjoy the “freedom” to have it all—high-powered careers, passionate partnerships, and brilliant, well-mannered children. That’s the spin, at least, from those who have never tried to balance the needs of bosses, spouses, and those demanding little people. Unlike guidebooks or workbooks that simply replace stress with guilt, or that offer tips most parents don’t find applicable, Three-Ring Circus offers a variety of real situations and honest stories. Parents will find comfort—and genuine solutions—in this frank collection of first-person accounts that includes married paramedics who work tag-team shifts to care for their four children, confessions of a working mom who finds the challenges of her career infinitely easier than appeasing two kids home sick from daycare, and a dad who shaped his journalism career around his children’s lives and wouldn’t have it any other way. In all, thirty moms and dads weigh in on making it all work—and knowing what to let go in the name of sanity.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; First Printing edition (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580051022
• ISBN-13: 978-1580051026
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #776,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "And Baby Makes Three - Ring Circus", July 18, 2004

By 

Nancy Lefko (Granada Hills, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family (Paperback)

The title of this book summarizes the theme of this compilation of essays edited by Dawn Comer Jefferson and Rosanne Welch. Couples share their experiences juggling marriage, work, and family (and their resulting guilt, angst, and frustration)as well as their joy in being parents. Most essays are written by either the mother or the father, although one is an interview of both parents. Parenthood is explored by working moms, down-sized dads, self-employed parents, stay-at-home parents, and those with alternative lifestyles. Their perspectives may be different, but they share many of the same emotions about the 24/7 job of multi-tasking in order to achieve a financially and emotionally secure family life.

I found this book to be both entertaining and informative. As a working mother of an eleven year-old girl and a wife of nearly twenty years, I could easily relate to the reactions of these parents in many of the situations they described. While reading, my ever-present questions were "Did they feel that way also?" and "What did he/she do about the situation?" Their reactions assured me that I'm not the only parent who struggles
with the balance of work and family and allowed me to see how they dealt with similar situations. I gave myself a pat on the back for having created a more organized environment than I prevously thought and breathed a sigh of relief that my life was less complicated than some revealed in these essays. This book inspired me to continue my own bancing act with fewer feelings of isolation and more self-confidence.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chaos Can Be Okay, May 14, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family (Paperback)

What a maddening culture we live in... here are real-life stories of caring people who chose to share their love with children, and it seems that no matter how hard they try to juggle all the things they expect to get out of life - mutually supportive marriage, tidy home, healthy kids, satisfying career - most of them start by beating themselves up because things aren't perfect!

These are heroic tales of men and women learning to let go of their assumptions about a life without flaws, be responsible for the consequences of their choices, and discover the daily joy of being present with both themselves and their children, especially when that looks and feels like chaos.

This is a great book for parents, grand-parents, anyone considering becoming a parent, and even those who've chosen not to become parents, because this collection reveals how much of a grip the myth of unattainable perfection has on our hearts, while simultaneously dramatizing the ways courageous individuals and couples are succeeding in breaking open the emotional prisons of fairy-tale gender roles and unsustainable upward financial mobility in order to simply enjoy their lives.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How do they do it ? A great book on juggling acts of familes, August 10, 2004

By 

Michael E. Lawshe "MELawshe" (Woodland Hills, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Three-Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work, and Family (Paperback)

In Three- Ring Circus, Rosanne Welch and Dawn Comer Jefferson have taken on a remarkable task in coordinating this refreshing and varied collection of stories, insights, and incidents in the world of parenting. Good Advice goes hand in hand with comfort and no advice as shift-working couples, single parents, and stay -at- home dads meet the complex and "normal" juggling acts of family and somehow pull through.

Newborn wonder, post-partum depression, teenage angst, mommies' night out and caregiver crisis tales are shared as each parent comes to terms that there is no one right way to raise a family.

Listen to closely to the individual "performers" in the stories and see how their voices echo the different style of acts within this Three- Ring Circus of marriage, work and family.

A great book for new families, friends of new parents, and working people everywhere, this collection will help both bosses and co- workers gain a perspective into the delicate acts of "how they do it."