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    The Feminine Mistake
    The Feminine Mistake
    The Feminine Mistake
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    The Feminine Mistake

    Written by Leslie Bennetts

    Narrated by Leslie Bennetts

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Women are constantly being told that it's simply too difficult to balance work and family, so if they don't really ""have to"" work, it's better for their families if they stay home. Not only is this untrue, Leslie Bennetts says, but the arguments in favor of stay-at-home motherhood fail to consider the surprising benefits of work and the unexpected toll of giving it up. It's time, she says, to get the message across—combining work and family really is the best choice for most women, and it's eminently doable.

    Bennetts raised two children while earning a living, and understands the challenges and the rewards firsthand. She and millions of other working women provide ample proof that there are many different ways to have kids, maintain a challenging career, and have a richly rewarding life as a result. When women sacrifice their financial autonomy by quitting their jobs, they become vulnerable to divorce as well as the potential illness, death, or unemployment of their breadwinner husbands. The truth is that when women gamble on dependency, most eventually end up on the wrong side of the odds.

    Not since Betty Friedan has anyone offered such an eye-opening and persuasive argument for why women can—and should—embrace the joyously complex lives they deserve.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMay 15, 2007
    ISBN9780061438257
    The Feminine Mistake
    Author

    Leslie Bennetts

    Leslie Bennetts has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 1988, writing on subjects that have ranged from movie stars to U.S. antiterrorism policy. Before joining that magazine, she was the first woman ever to cover a presidential campaign for The New York Times. Bennetts lives in New York City with her husband and their two children.

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    Reviews for The Feminine Mistake

    4.5/5

    21 ratings11 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Agreed with all of it, so...5 stars.
      Only wish I'd stuck with being determined to finish college and stay employed. Now, after 22 years of marriage, I'm in for a scary future.
    • 5/5
      I LOVE THIS BOOK!!! It is a must-read for all of the women in your lives - buy ten and give them as gifts.It was less about family values and more about the down-and-dirty of the unspoken question...the reality nobody talks about: Can you afford to raise your kids without your hubby?
    • 4/5
      I highly recommend this book to women in general, but especially to mothers and prospective mothers. Bennetts presents a well-researched/documented argument persuading women to nurture their careers along with their children once they become mothers. In exploring the recent trend of impressively educated, highly accomplished young women sacrificing their careers to become stay-at-home mothers, she ponders the question: Why, when the future is unpredictable and women can so easily lose their husbands' income to divorce, disability, and death, are so many young women choosing to cheerfully hope for the best and voluntarily become dependent on their husbands?

      She examines some social and historical reasons, including how the conservative media portray working moms as selfish and clamor for a return to more traditional gender roles. She argues that female dependency has very strong roots in western culture and there is a lot of pressure on women to stay at home.

      Bennetts cautions about the various risks to women. At the same time, she details the many advantages to maintaining a career, discussing the financial freedom and the security that come from employment but also the less tangible rewards, such as intellectual stimulation, continuing to face challenges as you move further ahead in your career, earning respect and accolades from colleagues and bosses, the pleasure of lifelong learning, and acting as a role model for your children, among other things.

      Overall it is a fascinating read and very important contribution.
    • 4/5
      Ya very well written. We need more such books to be written and published.
    • 3/5
      I was raised by a single mother. I married young and had two children. My husband and I struggled a lot financially, mostly because we were still in school when our son was born. He worked hard for about three years while I finished my degree in nursing. It was the smartest thing I ever did, finishing school and working while my children were small. My husband died at age 34 of cancer and I found myself alone with two young children. I loved this book because everything Leslie Bennetts says in it is true. I think being raised by a single mother taught me early that nothing is forever. I have a great career as a registered nurse, I've been working for 21 years and I have raised my kids. They are now adults and while I know I've made a lot of mistakes I am proud of them and proud of myself. I bless my late husband for the sacrifices he made to put me through school. If he hadn't I don't know what I would have done, he was insured but it wouldn't have lasted long enough to finish raising my children. This is a fantastic book a compassionate and thoughtful look at what happens to women who choose to be financially dependant on their husbands or partners.
    • 4/5
      Bennetts presents a valid argument for maintaining your income capacity.
    • 4/5
      Really recommend this to all women - SAHM or Working Moms, it doesn't matter.
    • 5/5
      Shoudl be required reading for every high school girl...and her family. All too many articles are published lauding the "opt out" revolution, without looking at the flip side. This book looks at that flip side. It would be nearly ideal, except for the fact that almost everything the author discusses is in relationship to highly educated, professional women who work in high-powered legal or professional fields. It would have been a better book if she would have given a bit more attention to the women that make up the vast majority of working women in this country: those who are struggling in a low paying job, or are doing pink collar work, or even middle level professionals like school teachers. Still, it's a nice start.
    • 5/5
      I avoided this book for a while, thinking it was just another voice in the "mommy wars". Just another book trying to convince the reader that working mothers are better for their children. When I did finally get around to reading "The Feminine Mistake" I was captured by the compassionate tone of Leslie Bennetts. And I realized, the focus of her book isn't solely what's best for the children, but more importantly, what's best for the mothers (Children automatically benefit when the mother is happy and balanced). Her goal was to educate women on the importance of supporting oneself financially. And she does so without pointing fingers at stay-at-home moms for the choices they have made. Instead she outlines the consequences of either choice, staying at home or working while raising children. The author makes it clear that the odds are stacked against women, that choose financial dependency. Women live longer than men and there is a 50% divorce rate. The chance that a women might end up alone, without a partner to take care of her financially, are high. One of the statistics in the book points out that "Motherhood is now the single best indicator that a women's live will end in financial collapse" That one really brought it home for me. There is just no good enough reason to gamble with your life like that. With or without children, women have to take care of themselves financially.
    • 3/5
      I didn't agree with the contents of this book as much as I expected to, having read some responses to it on various blogs. My biggest criticism it that the book tried to address too many separate issues under the guise of always staying on the large topic of the financial risk of being a stay at home mom.In many respects, this was in response to a particular class of stay at home moms, that is the highly educated, professional women who leave jobs as lawyers, executives, etc., because their husbands make so much money that having a second salary doesn't seem all that appealing compared to living a life of leisure and/or of raising kids. Bennetts warns all women to not be financially dependent on a man. Fair enough. But wouldn't it be a better approach to encourage all women to be financially independent? This slight change in perspective would include women who are dependent on other women as well as all those who depend on men. If financial independence from spouses is all Bennetts is concerned about, then much of this book is superfluous. The whole chapter on the non-financial benefits of work is irrelevant to this thesis. So perhaps the starting point should have been to persuade women that the benefits of paid labour outweigh the benefits of raising children while being off the job market. Only, Bennetts doesn't seem to praise the benefits of all work and any work. Though she does occasionally speak to the experiences of lower class women, her chapter on the rewards of work is focussed on the rewards of having a successful professional career (as opposed to spending 40 years working full-time at a low paying retail job, for example). Moreover, if financial independence is the only point, why does Bennetts seem so dismissive of one woman who suggests that in really wealthy marriages, one solution might be for wives to have their own investment incomes rather than to count on paid labour?One theme Bennetts returns to frequently is the importance of taking a long view of life and always remembering that the years a woman will spend as a mother to pre-school aged children constitute only a small time in the overall potential worklife of the average woman. At one point, Bennetts retells an anecdote in which she counseled a good friend of hers not to down grade to part time work when her children were still young and she was so very, very tired all the time. Bennetts explains that this was because the financial cost of even a partial exit from paid labour for even a few years was a lot higher than the loss in salary during those years. And so she encourages women to keep full-time work even during their children's pre-school years and to just accept that they will be absolutely exhausted for that period of their lives and that they will not feel they are giving their all to either their children or their work.But at another point, she retells the story of a woman who did exit the paid labour force for the years in which her children were youngest, but made sure to keep networking, to keep up with developments in her fields, and to take on a paid project in her field (she wrote an article or book). This tale seems to be recounted approvingly. So why would this be more OK than her friend wanting to work 3 days a week for a couple of years?There are inconsistencies in Bennetts' approach in different chapters and anecdotes.This book would have been a lot more convincing if it had focused exclusively on professional women and had urged them to plan any exits and entries from paid labour rather than just quitting their jobs without having a plan in mind for how long they wanted to be unemployed and how they would return to work when they wanted to. If Bennetts had limited herself to this particular segment of society, she could have written a much more convincing, on point account.Moreover, Bennetts alludes to problems in the work force, especially in professional milieus, with employers expecting crazy hours out of their employees and creating family unfriendly work places in various different ways. Is it any wonder some women want to walk away from that when they can afford to? The problem isn't just women short sightedly choosing to leave the workforce, the problem in many instances is the work force itself. In some chapters, Bennetts seems to recognize that women will have to make compromises in the type of work they choose. For example, a lawyer who is getting ready to have children might want to work for a small suburban firm rather than an NYC giant. Bennetts gives the nod to such choices. What I take from this book and agree with most is that any exit from the work force requires planning and should not be done whimsically and that it is important to keep the big picture and the long-term in mind when making choices about employment (or non-employment).
    • 5/5
      This book gives a thoughtful analysis, supported by numerous real-life stories, of the possible disadvantages of leaving the workforce to stay home with your kids. While the author states that she is not trying to invalidate the choice of some to become stay-at-home moms, she wants to create an awareness of the potential issues with that choice. In my case, it reinforced many of my own fears, but also my own desire to have some financial independence and stability before marriage and kids, if I choose that route.