Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
I have so MANY reactions to this book I am not sure I can get them all down…
I expected to HATE the book. But I don’t. Rather it has motivated me to really think about the mom issue and the woman issue.
Her comments on the mommy wars are very accurate. Both sides are trying so hard to justify themselves that it’s a fight to the finish. But what is being lost in the fight are the kids.
But throughout the book I got the impression I get from many modern liberal women— you are free to make choices as long as it’s the feminist choice.
Sandburg wants women to have more ambition, but why is taking care of kids not ambitious?
She also completely blows past the hard science issues of biology and the difference in men and women with a few comments on how her hubs cannot breast feed. And, she cites only one study on the impact on children of working mothers— when there are many others that speak to negative effects of day care And positive effects of stay at homes until kids hit 4th grade for upper and upper middle class families.
Our real problem is that feminists won’t allow a real discussion and study of how working effects kids and families. It may have no effect, it may be negative and it may be positive. But a liberal dominated agenda that ignores studies they don’t like wont help us get to the bottom of what’s going on…
I am also for more involved dads. But in the real world and not the rarefied air Sandberg inhabits— I know a handful and they mainly only take of the kids b/c they don’t have jobs and their wives do. That is not an active choice— but it is a change that may have a long-term pay off in changing the culture— ie women working outside the home in the war.
Lets also talk about men who don’t want to date powerful, successful women. Many women who value getting married make dating harder on themselves by being successful and can barely get a date much less put men through tests!
And she’s pushing a capitalist paradigm in a quickly changing post-capitalist world. Most women got into the workforce not by choice but for money. B/c over the last several decades a single income isn’t enough…. We need to dig even deeper and think about what’s happening to the American system and change our thinking about the myth of Horatio Alger.
She also complexity ignores sexual harassment–which is a huge issue for young women in the work place.
I have tons more to say— but I have a four-year old who needs me–
The Booky Mom 