- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Talk Miramax Books (April 10 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0786867663
- ISBN-13: 978-0786867660
- Product Dimensions: 21.7 x 14.8 x 3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 494 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #631,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
"Between a third and a half of all high-achieving women in America do not have children" and "the vast majority yearn" for them, says Hewlett, founder of the National Parenting Association. In this study of baby lust, Hewlett portrays the anguished hand-wringing by middle-aged women who were career-obsessed throughout their 20s and 30s, only to wake up single at 40, biological clocks all petered out. Infertility treatment is not a solution, she says; it's expensive, dangerous to women's health and unlikely to produce a pregnancy, much less a live, healthy baby. Moms and potential moms from playwright Wendy Wasserstein to a 46-year-old single woman who traveled to China to adopt illustrate Hewlett's thesis that "some of the most heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause. A few succeed; most do not." Hewlett attests that "if high-altitude careers inevitably exact a price, it's profoundly unfair that the highest prices... are paid by women." "Self-indulgent" women might try to have a child and a career by hiring a nanny, but for Hewlett, it's more "courageous" for a woman to forgo childbearing if a career is her real goal. Hewlett's advice to young women is strangely retro: get married you'll be happier and healthier. She counsels them to give "urgent priority" to finding a marriage partner fast, "have your first baby before 35" and look for work at a family-friendly corporation. Though ardently argued, her case is unconvincing.
From Booklist
Founder of the National Parenting Association, Hewlett reports on new data showing nearly half of the most successful women in corporate America are childless, mostly contrary to their heartfelt desires. Hewlett begins with interviews of high-powered women--lawyers, journalists, scholars, doctors, businesswomen--who wanted children but ran out of time to begin their families. She reviews recent data on career women and their odds of marrying and raising a family, noting that despite promising medical technology, most women over the age of 40 aren't able to conceive and deliver healthy babies. According to the author, "most of the heartfelt struggles of the breakthrough generation have centered on the attempt to snatch a child from the jaws of menopause." Finally, she presents strategies on how young women can avoid the fate of the previous generation and what corporations can do to support women who want both careers and families. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended!,
By
This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)
Women everywhere are talking about Creating A Life, which exploded into the U.S. media with a controversial and disturbing message: Career women are waiting too long to have children! Despite the uproar it has caused, Sylvia Ann Hewlett's analysis of the situation is actually quite evenhanded, even if she is prone to overgeneralization. Hewlett does not attack childless women - as many have accused - rather, she logically assesses the reasons that so many highly successful women do not have kids. Her prescriptions for the problem of high-achiever childlessness might not win her any friends in feminist camps, but nevertheless, we from getAbstract highly recommend that all professional women (and their husbands or potential husbands) read this book and decide for themselves.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Every Working Woman Should Read This Book!,
By Cynthia (CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)
If I had known then what I know now:1. I wouldn't have felt so alone in my quest to have children while climbing the corporate ladder. 2. I probably would have tried to have my 2 kids a little earlier before the height of my career as opposed to during the height of my career. 3. I would have rejoiced more while pregnant over how lucky I was/am to have become a mom in my mid-thirties rather than feel bad that I was being passed over for promotions. 4. I would have encouraged girlfriends who are now too old to have kids to have had kids earlier, rather than encouraged them as much in their careers. 5. I would have set myself up more conservatively in my finances so that I could truly enjoy my young family better. Overall, this book gives working women the TRUTH, not the "you can have it all" line that feminists and propaganda have been throwing at this generation of women for some thirty-plus years now. The truth is, having a family isn't the same for women as it is for men; and therefore, how can women expect that their careers can be equal or the same to a man's after having a family? Well, the cold-hard truth is, in today's corporate society women are not supported in their endeavors to have families. And whether Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book provides any real solutions to this or not, the most important achievement of this book is that it heightens awareness to this extremely important issue!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hewlett Rules, In Spite of Herself,
By Steve Wunsch (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children (Hardcover)
In a letter to the editor on May 25, 2002,(Women's Choices: The More the Better), Sylvia Ann Hewlett takes umbrage at the characterization in a NY Times front page story of the policy section in her book as "cursory and obligatory" ("The Talk of the Book World Still Can't Sell", 5/20/02). In her letter, she vigorously defends the seriousness of her policy prescriptions and her sincerely feminist intent in offering them, concluding, "At the center of this book is a profoundly feminist message: women deserve generous choices in their lives and should not be called upon to sacrifice either career or children." I'm glad she did. While her prescriptions are as impractical and socialist as only a Harvard-trained economist could dream up, they are indeed serious. Moreover, the reason this is such an important book is that Hewlett's feminist credentials are as impeccable as her research. It would have been dismissed out of hand if it had been written by, for example, Rush Limbaugh. But when Hewlett devotes 3 chapters to such recommendations as eliminating the lack of marginal compensation for long hours (such as occurs when salaried employees are not paid overtime), because it gives advantages to those who spend less time raising children -- ie, men -- she burnishes her bona fides as a solidly socialist feminist. Because of those bona fides we know for sure that she did, as she claims, start out to write a book celebrating the achievements of women, and was indeed surprised when her findings forced her to write one, instead, about their disappointments on the family front.Perhaps if she rereads it again in a year or two, she will see why no-one is taking her policy prescriptions seriously. She may even see why it's not selling. It's not selling for the same reason that she can hardly stomach her own findings: working women and the whole egalitarian culture of corporate women and men that feminism has bred have locked themselves into choices that her book proves are wrong. Creating a Life proves -- even if its author can't yet admit it to herself -- that feminism and the Government-mandated workplace equality of women are entirely untenable and self-destructive ideas. It's a very good book, well researched, well written, and very important -- in spite of its author's intentions.
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