Rating: 
Summary: A Few Good Points Buried in a Marriage/Baby Obsession
Review: Yes, some things are best pursued during young adulthood - college education, career building, baby-making. Hewlett's research makes that point, and it alone is worth two stars. But from this, she makes at least two faulty conclusions: (1) Her high-achieving childless female subjects were too stupid to figure this out until they hit 40. (2) Since men can "have it all", women are entitled to the same. Obviously, our options will diminish over time. And it follows that no one - male or female - can have everything, regardless of how someone's life might look on the surface. Life involves trade-offs. In this book, Hewlett responds to her interviewees as objects of pity rather than recipients of immense blessing. To have health, freedom, and success is far more than most people have in this world - especially women - and is certainly nothing to snivel about. Hewlett's own story in the Preface about her obessession with bearing a FOURTH child after age 45 along with other stories of the huge self-indulgent waste of time and money on ineffective infertility treatments was enough to make me want to close this book many times while reading it. Can't these women find more important things to worry about? The adage "Count your blessings before you count your troubles" apparently never occurred to anyone in the small, yet largely biased sample of workaholic women. Also she makes a rather naive - if not irritating - criticism about people being single because they are "unprepared to make the sacrifices necessary to share a life with someone else." Hewlett has been married for over two decades, through life in the '80s and '90s. How current is her knowledge of what those "sacrifices" might be? For example, is she aware that heterosexual women are the fastest growing HIV/AIDS population, yet most those women are/were married?
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed Data, Conservative Bias
Review: Ms. Hewlett's book reminds me of that discredited Harvard-Yale marriage study in the 80s that said women needed to marry early, or not find husbands. Hewlett's data has been soundly criticized in the press. Fortune, among others, found her data (one small study of 500 women!) to be way off base. Family size has been declining for generations in all industrialized nations, as women's opportunities have opened up in education and work. How one feels about this change probably has a lot to do with one's politics and preferences. Hewlett's is clear: she's a Mom of five. Good for her, but if her intention was to get other women to act more like her, why not write a book about how happy she is about her life choices---rather than generalize from a set of flawed data, purporting to "help" young women "plan" to have babies early? "Scare" young women is more like it. Just like that debunked Harvard-Yale study, and putting forth frightening "facts" and biased journalism is just plain obnoxious.
Rating:
Summary: I wish there were a 0 rating.
Review: This author loves children. She tells us so any number of times, as if that somehow qualifies her to write about motherhood. She is a prime example of what child-free people call "the breeder mentality", so stuffed with the word "entitled" she overflows with it, and completely condedescending and supercilious toward any different mindset -- particularly the child-free one. Men will find her assertions regarding husband-hunting in time to breed bone-chilling, particularly in light of today's divorce rates (something else she doesn't really cover). Myself, I approached this book with a little hesitation, because I am child-free and proud of it. I read it with an increasing amount of anger and disdain. What's sad is that the writer actually has an interesting thing to say -- that women in the highest-paying jobs are having a major problem juggling work and home life, and in the middle of their stressful lives, frequently end up "forgetting" to have kids. She says some important things about fertility and how assisted-fertility treatments like IVF aren't the saviors that ignorant young women think they are. She says good things about the importance of making choices early on that will allow one flexibility to pursue life dreams later. Those are important things, but to get to them, you have to wade through pages and pages of pity, self-loathing, and delusion. She dismisses the child-free movement as a "mini-movement", conveniently forgetting that 14% of her female respondents, and 13% of the respondents' partners, are child-free and do not even want children. She is shocked that the child-free resent parents having the perks they do, when, according to her, any fool can see that parents don't have ENOUGH perks (what planet is she on? Do ALL parents believe that the child-free exist to pick up their slack?). What is worse, when she does interview a man who tried to have it all and now regrets that he could not spend more time with his 3 daughters, her response is "Let's get real. At least he has children." I hope that father sees this and realizes that not everybody has such misguided priorities, or is so callous. She buys into the claptrap about a woman's "highest function" being breeding, and even lets these high-powered executive women rattle on and on about how despite their incredible careers, dizzying salaries, and fantastic lifestyles, they're really just walking wombs. No mention is made of the destructiveness of self-pity and regret... no, these women are, indeed, poor little victims of the horrible workaday culture that forced them at gunpoint to work 70-hour weeks. The way I see it, she glosses completely over one of the most important clues she's got: That the workplace needs to be fair for EVERYBODY. That NOBODY has a premium on "deserving" more free time -- not mothers, not fathers, not the child-free, nobody. She's completely missed that point, and because she has, she won't get anywhere with her little entitlement scheme. What she suggests is unfair, and we know it. I'd skip this one, unless you happen to be a similarly-minded entitlement drone.. in which case I've no doubt you'll love it.
Rating:
Summary: Sending Us a 1950s Message
Review: I read about Ms. Hewlett in a "Time" magazine article on 30+ career women who have had trouble conceiving. The message I got from her was that my main goal in life should be to have babies. She is just trying to send us women back to the fifties when having babies was all that we were "supposed" to do. Well, I have a message for Ms. Hewlett: I am not worried about beating my biological clock because at 33, I have decided I don't want any kids. Furthermore, I have a career that I enjoy and am currently attending college to obtain my degree so that I can advance in my career. I am not unhappy because I have decided what is right for me. Other women have done the same thing--they have made choices that are right for them. They may not have been the same as mine, but they made them and they are not unhappy. What makes us unhappy is people like Hewlett trying to dictate to us what we should be simply because we have breasts and hips. Well, we don't need this book and we don't need her pressuring us all to be June Cleaver.
Rating: 
Summary: Changed my Life
Review: This book has changed my life. At 28, already a "high achieving" woman according to the book, I have rejected the notion of children, using my career as my weapon to keep those thoughts at bay.
This book came to me just at the right time for me to realize that I may miss out on something if I don't look at what I really, truly want, and build a life outside of my job, before it's too late!
This has also given me the new desire to continue being a high achieving woman, and continue the journey that my mother and her mother began. To be an example of a strong, career-successful woman, with a family, to help mold the world so that younger women don't have to feel that it's a choice. We can have it all, we just need to keep fighting!
Rating: 
Summary: Life is unfair!- - - whoever said it was fair?
Review: Statistics are ALWAYS flawed, ..., and just plain false. But with that, lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater. What I find so important in this book is the issue that is brought forward. The only time that my fertility was explained to me was 6th grade health class- and we didn't broach this subject. To me, it's simple, and totally unfair. As a woman who wants children, I have to design my life to include children and given the new insight into the restrictions of my fertility, I may have to do it earlier than I had previously been told. My husband doesn't have this issue, I do. It's totally unfair and hopefully we all can work to make is a nonissue for our girls and granddaughters, but for us it is an issue. I don't think the author is advocating getting all girls knocked up early so their careers go nowhere (as it seems some are saying), she just wants to empower us with the truth of our fertility. One thing for sure, this is a PASSIONATE issue for women.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Important and Misrepresented
Review: I am disapointed by the way this book has been misrepresented by the press and academics. Hewitt is not arguing that every women should have children. She is pointing out that certain career tracks are unfriendly to women wanting to have children before 35, sometimes tragically so, as her story shows. She is not suggesting that women give up their careers for families, but attempting to lead the way toward some pretty radical political reforms so that women will not have to make the choice between career and family. I do not agree with all of her proposals, but I was thrilled that she had raised some important issues, and now very disappointed that they are being ignored and overshadowed by strange accusations of anti-feminism. I, an academic myself, am discouraged by the reaction Hewitt's book is getting among my peers. It seems that those who want to continue their careers while making family a priority, will not find a voice any time soon.
Rating:
Summary: She speaketh the truth
Review: Why is everybody so mad at Ms. Hewlett? She is not advocating children; she made it clear that if you are truly happy not ever having kids, fine and dandy. This book is invaluable, priceless advice for pretty, ambitious young women who would like to try to have both career and family. It simply speaks the truth--that as you grow older the eligibles decline and fertility declines also. I wish I had read it at age 28. I am 43 and married at 32. DH is sterile and refused to let me try AI until we both got tired of trying to adopt domestically. I was 37, did a horrible cycle with Pergonal and gave up. I am now thrilled to have two beautiful daughters from China, and don't really regret "not having my own" but still, I wish that I had known the real fertility stats earlier. I could have started trying at age 32.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly conceived
Review: Poorly conceived and deeply problematic. As an historian, I can contextualize this book: Hewlett is no different from eugenists who argued in the 1920s that upper-class intelligent women were failing in their duty to produce children and that these women would regret it. She is also no different from 19th century gynecologists such as Edward Clarke who claimed that women who attended college would suffer from infertility and uterine problems (and like Hewlett, Clarke also insisted that women and men were/are equal!). The truth is Hewlett's thesis isn't even new---moreover, her thesis has yet to be proven with good accurate statistics and an unbiased approach to the question. Where is the discussion of the DROP which occurs in men's fertility as they age? Where is the discussion of the rise in birth defects which increase as men age? Fertility is NOT dependent solely on the woman's status---it takes two to make a baby. Hewlett's compelete disregard for and refusal to discuss male fertility and the problems which occur as men age reveals serious problems in her methodology. No scholar would ever approach a study from such a biased angle (ignoring half the problem). As an academic, I was deeply insulted by Hewlett's slipshod approach and methodology---regardless of her conclusions, her book is seriously flawed by this type of carelessness and disregard for basic standards.
I strongly suggest that readers who are impressed with Hewlett look at discussions of her work which have appeared in magazines as diverse as Fortune and The American Prospect. When Fortune (not exactly a liberal magazine) condemns Hewlett's work you know it's got to be bad. Moreover, Hewlett's claim that career-women are NOT having children is graphically refuted by both Fortune's studies as well as statistical studies by the American Prospect. Career-women, as these better studies illustrate, simply have their children at a slightly later age (and, contrary to Hewlett's thesis, they DO have children at the same rate as their working-class counterparts---they just have them later). On a personal level (since we are throwing away the idea that unbiased approaches to this issue are key), ALL of the women whom I know of who suffer from infertility are in their 20s and early 30s; fertility is not always age-related (as would be evidenced by the fact that most of my friends who are in their late 30s and early 40s have managed to get pregnant). If nothing else, the fact that Hewlett herself managed to have a child at 51 (why is this acceptable for her but not other women?) should throw a wrench in her thesis. I still find myself confused as to why Hewlett's book has generated discussion. Why did the New York Times feel a need to run op-eds discussing the fact that this book wasn't selling? Do we do this with other books which don't sell? Do we do this with books which scholars dismiss as poorly documented? Of course not. The fact that the book generated such discussion indicates the presence of a tremendous backlash against women, especially career women as well as a desire on the part of the mainstream media to create an issue which may not exist. The book has done what Hewlett intended--scared younger women into believing that marriage is the answer (look for more divorces in the future) and provided older women with "the" answer (this is the reason why they didn't have children). The truth, as always, is much more complex than Hewlett would have us believe---in fact, Hewlett's thesis (the more successful a woman is the less likely she is to have children) has already been refuted (with a better and less biased use of statistics) by several scholars and journalists. As a social commentary/explanation as to why today's families are smaller or why some women (AND MEN) are not having children, Hewlett's work is insufficient.
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