The question of how best to combine work and family life has led to lively debates in recent years. Both a lifestyle and a policy issue, it has been addressed psychologically, socially, and economically, and conclusions have been hotly contested. But as Neil Gilbert shows in this penetrating and provocative book, we haven't looked closely enough at how and why these questions are framed, or who benefits from the proposed answers. A Mother's Work takes a hard look at the unprecedented rise in childlessness, along with the outsourcing of family care and household production, which have helped to alter family life since the 1960s. It challenges the conventional view on how to balance motherhood and employment, and examines how the choices women make are influenced by the culture of capitalism, feminist expectations, and the social policies of the welfare state. Gilbert argues that while the market ignores the essential value of a mother's work, prevailing norms about the social benefits of work have been overvalued by elites whose opportunities and circumstances little resemble those of most working- and middle-class mothers. And the policies that have been crafted too often seem friendlier to the market than to the family. Gilbert ends his discussion by looking at the issue internationally, and he makes the case for reframing the debate to include a wider range of social values and public benefits that present more options for managing work and family responsibilities.

With a new baby, little money, but lots of determination and drive, Rebecca Matthias started a business from scratch out of her home some eighteen years ago. Today her company, Mothers Work--which includes the retail outlets Mimi Maternity, Motherhood, and A Pea in the Pod--has grown to become a multimillion-dollar maternity clothing empire. Written with a refreshingly candid, can-do attitude, MothersWork describes how Matthias got her company off the ground--offering specific lessons for other entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs on the nuts and bolts of building and growing your dream. The first step, of course, is fastening on what it is you plan to sell. As Matthias searched for an idea for a new company--around the time of her first pregnancy--she was discovering how impossible it was to find maternity clothes suitable for the office. Realizing that other professional women were in the same boat, Matthias launched a mail-order business selling maternity clothes. The initial response was staggering, and Matthias's company was on its way. What they discovered was that, unlike new mothers of a generation earlier, women were staying in the workforce throughout their pregnancies. The shift was a revolution in the workplace, with Mothers Work supplying the uniforms. Over the next few years, despite a series of setbacks as Matthias and her husband grappled with managing accounting, sales, inventory, and financing, the company gradually took off. In the course of describing how she built her business, Matthias reveals hard-won lessons she learned about how to research an idea, test it in the market, raise money, deal with employees, taxes, bankers, cash flow, marketing, franchising, and more. Both motivational and deeply personal, MothersWork offers a three-dimensional blueprint for every woman--and man--who dreams of successfully starting a company.

The author argues that mothers should work outside the home and men must take half the responsibility for child care, in order to create a richer parenting experience, stronger marriages, and happier children.

Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Women played the central role in this development. In Mother-Work, Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of childrearing, using the direct relationship between them to shed new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States. Mother-work, defined as "women's unpaid work of reproduction and caregiving", was the motivation behind women's public activism and "maternalist" ideology. Ladd-Taylor emphasizes the connection between mother-work and social welfare politics by showing that their mothering experiences led women to become active in the development of public health, education, and welfare services. In turn, the advent of these services altered mothering experiences in a number of ways, including by reducing the infant mortality rate. By examining women's activism in organizations including the National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations, the U.S. Children's Bureau, and the National Woman's Party, Ladd-Taylor dispels the notion of "mother-work" as a contradictory term and clarifies women's role in the development of the American economic system.

The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and social policies aren't helping. Of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies. Can American women look to Europe for solutions? Making Motherhood Work draws on interviews that Caitlyn Collins conducted over five years with 135 middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. She explores how women navigate work and family given the different policy supports available in each country. Taking readers into women's homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, Collins shows that mothers' expectations depend on context and that policies alone cannot solve women's struggles. With women held to unrealistic standards, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.

An insatiable need for sex and love. Periods of overeating or starving. A pattern of unstable and painful relationships. Does this sound painfully familiar? Trauma counselor Kelly McDaniel has seen these traits over and over in clients who feel trapped in cycles of harmful behaviors-and are unable to stop. Many of us find ourselves stuck in unhealthy habits simply because we don't see a better way. With Mother Hunger, McDaniel helps women break the cycle of destructive behavior by taking a fresh look at childhood trauma and its lasting impact. In doing so, she destigmatizes the shame that comes with being under-mothered and misdiagnosed. McDaniel offers a healing path with powerful tools that include therapeutic interventions and lifestyle changes in service to healthy relationships. The constant search for mother love can be a lifelong emotional burden, but healing begins with knowing and naming what we are missing. McDaniel is the first clinician to identify Mother Hunger, which demystifies the search for love and provides the compass that each woman needs to end the struggle with achy, lonely emptiness, and come home to herself.

Explores reasons for women's continued economic disadvantage and the conflicts women feel between career and family, which men do not. Offers proposals that would help society overcome these discrepancies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR