Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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."

Three-Ring Circus is a reassuring manuel not only on the parenting experience but how we view ourselves and our life around us. I found the honest, first hand accounts of the world of parenting, career and relationships in this book, to be very reassuring. As a parent myself, It's very easy to slip into days of self doubt and just getting by. The healing part of Three-Ring Circus is that it offers encouragement in shared experiences that prove very comforting.

I like to look for hero's. Parents are one that earn the title. Working parents? "Three-Ring Circus" narrows the media-made cavern between the wars and misconceptions of stay at home parents against those who work. I get to stay home with our two kids. It humbled me to see how hard these parents WORK to BE THERE for their kids. This once viewed "cavern" is narrowed with plain talk of parents who absolutely love their kids, deal with life's struggles, challenges and show the committment of hanging in there all in trying to keep the balance in life. That's a hero I can look up to!

Barb Andreas
Stay at home Mom of 2