Mommy Myth

According to an article in the New Yorker, more than 60 percent of women with children under the age of six are employed. Among mothers of children between the ages of six and seventeen, that figure rises to nearly eighty percent.

Women who could do anything are quoted (inevitably) as saying they want nothing more than to stay home with their kids

That's not to say that mothers experience no important differences between staying at home and working. As Steiner's book notes, many working mothers struggle with the stress that comes from playing dual roles Ð'-- and the guilt that comes from seeing less of their children than they would like. Meanwhile, many stay-at-home moms struggle with feelings of isolation, exhaustion and irrelevance. Each pathway has both benefits and costs for the children. But whether one pathway is "better" is impossible to answer in the abstract.

little to do with the choices women make. When it comes to the decision of whether to seek paid employment or stay home, most American mothers face virtually no choice at all.

Wages for housework

Young women today are confused Ð'- difficult to find a direction and a balance Ð'- being brought up to climb that corporate ladder and stomp on men the whole way up Ð'- all the while forgetting about marriage and motherhood Ð'- not even looked at as an option till after 35 and successful

What defines success for a women is different than what it used to be? Should success have a general definition or should it vary by person/gender?

Can one be a feminist and a mother?

Mother's need to be trained and well-versed in too many different areas

"Mothers needed to be the equivalent of physicians' assistants, pharmacists, child product safety testers, nutritionists, crafts people, and district attorneys."

I enjoyed the book's timeline that it followed Ð'- showing the differences from each decade. In particular the 80's where there was so much fear put into mothers with Halloween and kidnapping and all these new rules that needed to be followed with regard to nutrition and babysitters and toy safety, day care abuses

Media panics

Does being a mother really give a woman a sense of purpose Ð'- her only sense of purpose

The celebrity mom is a super mom Ð'- tends to bring back all the stereotypes that the modern woman has tried to abandon Ð'- that women prefer motherhood