Rating: 
Summary: not another book to make me feel guilty
Review: I picked up this book on the reccomendation of a friend and was appalled at what it espouses. I am a hard working freelance writer who owns a business. I am independent, unattached and would have liked children. I made the determination that I would only have a child if I was married. I was raised by a widowed mother and it is not an experience I would inflict on any child. I truly tried to find someone to share my life with and raise a family. It didn't happen. So now, I not only have to deal with the ever present guilt inflicted upon me by my mother for not giving her grandchildren, and the prospect that I will die alone and unloved, I must also feel guilty for not getting knocked up in high school. Somehow, this seems a heartless and cruel attitude and I resent the implications that my life is worthless because I do not have children. I returned the book.
Rating:
Summary: Hewlitt's assumptions and biases undermine and derail study
Review: There's a reason that women who achieve a lot don't always have children; it's called opportunity costs. And, the road not taken is often avoided by design. Hewlitt needs to give men and women more credit - not every woman is infantile and not every man is insecure. Sometimes the choices we make just seem inadvertent to people who cannot see beyond their own agenda.Overall, Hewlitt's assumptions and clear biases undermined and finally derailed any legitimacy her research might have had. Further, her analysis was in the end sophomoric and disorganized.
Rating:
Summary: One Woman's Opinions
Review: I was horrified by the implications of Creating a Life. I, an unassuming childless woman, picked up this book only to be lured into reading about the author's biast opinions about childless women. Not only does she say that children are a nessecity to a happy, fulfilling life, but she makes it blatently clear childlessness is the wrong choice. It wasn't for me and I believe Sylvia Ann Hewlitt's book is demeaning to all women who should be free to make their make their own choices.
Rating: 
Summary: Liberal Feminists are the Problem
Review: I see all these one star ratings and having read them all I see a common theme here. They all say that the women who make the choice not to have children instinctively feel that way, and should be able to stand up and make their careers work and not be 'brainwashed' or 'pressured' into having children.
But hey, the book is merely indicating that less professional women are having children?..suggesting it could be the chicken or the egg here..either (a) that professional women are not interested in children or that (b) the professional lifestyle hides their underlying desire to have children. They should not assume that women 'just know' whether children are good for them or not. I think it is more than that.
Living in Manahattan, I see and experince first hand the pressure that professional women and men experience. Psychologically, I notice women and men go through different moods according to the working week, and the difference between 'work mood' and 'relax mood' is more distinct than with non-Professionals, or those under less pressure. During these 'work moods' these people are so neurotic and overwhelmed with their careers their sex drive is affected and they also have no time to feel their desire for a natural normal human goal: to create a new life. So, when the career ambitions subside, and they have more time on their hands, they come out of their 'work mood' and realise they have missed out on half of their life goal.
I speak to many women, and every single one of them really does desire a child to nurture..its is natural. I see and hear that every time they are relaxed and have time to think about it.
I think it is such a pity that such women, who already have a higher god given responsibility in child-rearing compared with men, should have to work so hard and not have the time to find a suitable mate (who doesn't have to fit into such a narrow definition because of time constraints), and have the opportunity to express their loving nature in the raising of a child. All you feminist folk screaming they 'just know' and should be able to stand up for their careers..shame on you!....you are taking women away from what they truly desire and creating a utilitarian and selfish society that will run itself into the ground.
Rating:
Summary: Not the life of anyone I know....
Review: I am a 52-year-old man who married at 19, had 5 children by the age of 33, and am now facing the last stages of aplastic anemia. In other words, I think I'm a good deal more qualified to comment on family life than is Ms. Hewlett. I will be honest: Although we both hold masters' degrees, my wife makes twice the income I do, and when we were younger, we split shifts to make BOTH our careers work and enjoy parenting. My wife and I have an income well over six figures, which certainly puts us in Hewlett's "high-acheiving" category. Yet, we could only find a few "caricatures" (since that's exactly what they are) in this book that resembled anyone we knew. We DO have a daughter struggling with infertility--who married at 22, has two advanced degrees, and is 29 and married to an equally accomplished man. Her infertility obviously isn't age-related. (I was so terrified she'd find this book that I returned it to the bookstore.) Nor do I think that men are somehow dumping "accomplished" women in droves. In my professional life as a public interest lawyer, I knew few men who were not married to women who were at least their intellectual equals. Some of them, it's true, did have difficulties having children and careers simultaneously, along with their wives. Was it that they and their spouses "put themselves first?" No--it's a much simpler reason, and as a former economist, Hewlett is a fool for not mentioning it: It's the economy. While the "simple living" movement made a nice dent in this, the fact is that materialistic tomes emnating from places like Manhattan make it difficult for couples to survive on one income. At one point Hewlett writes that she didn't have to "maximize her earnings" during the several cutting-edge infertility she went through at 51. Maximize? Uh, right. There's a solution to this--it's not scaring little girls into having babies at 19, nor whipping "career women" who have to wait. It has more to do with raising wages, affordable housing, marital stability, better health care (much infertility is caused by untreated STDs), and teaching people about when it's realistic to be parents (I wasn't at 20, some aren't at 35, and some aren't ever, especially if the baby is just another "accomplishment." My mother had six children, spoke only Spanish, and could not read or write in any language. She had her last child at 49--not by choice, either. My father was no more educated, nor did he make a "living wage" for eight people. It bothers me that as I get ready to leave this earth, we haven't come much further than Brownsville, Texas in the 1950s. In Hewlett's view, a woman must have an accomplished husband, children, and high-track career. My mother had few choices--now it appears that my daughters don't, either. What a waste, to promulgate this do-as-I-do "feminism."
Rating:
Summary: Yet another guilt-trip for women
Review: Has it ever occurred to people like Ms. Hewlett that "having it all" does not necessarily include motherhood? I resent the implication of her book's title that women who choose to forego child-rearing somehow lack "a life." The so-called 'biological clock' is nothing more than a political
and social construct designed to manipulate successful, intelligent, well-educated women into having babies. ... What books like this fail to take into account is the significant number of women for whom motherhood holds no interest. Instead of joining in the collective Baby Boomer hand-wringing over this "issue," childfree women are out there enjoying life, and not experiencing the empty hole that the media keep insisting they should have. Women over age 35 who choose to remain childless are growing in
numbers. We have disposable income, and we vote. It's time this
demographic stops being overlooked. We're not buying the
brainwashing.
Rating:
Summary: Bad Data, Terrible Conclusions
Review: Hewlett's claim that she wanted to write a book about successful women and then uncovered the tragedy of how many of them 'forgot' to have children is disingenuous. She has an ax to grind - she can't stand the fact that some women haven't reproduced (the author herself just HAD to have a baby at age 51 despite her husband's reluctance). So she gathers data from discredited studies, asks misleading questions, and then draws her so-called conclusions. For instance, she says only 14% of women she surveyed wanted to be childless yet almost 50% of those surveyed were. Therefore, there must be large numbers of women yearning to have kids but who just haven't. Yet she arrived at that 'conclusion' by asking women if, while they were in college, they thought they would have children. But, interestingly, she does NOT ask them if they still think they want children (if she had and the numbers were the same, she might actually have had a real piece of data!). She just assumes they do and, q.e.d. they're unhappy and unfulfilled. Wouldn't it have made sense for her next question to be, "Now that you're older, do you still think you'd like to have children?" The fact she didn't ask seems to me to indicate she realized a lot of the women in her survey would have said "no;" so she took her "when you were in college" question and leaped to the conclusions she had already decided upon. Too bad this author gets so much spotlight. She has so little to say, and no data to support it.
Rating:
Summary: Life is About Choices
Review: This book has received far too much press. Women finally have the freedom choose and don't have to settle for less than they deserve. As a "high acheiving" corporate professional woman, I do not have regrets and take full responsibility for the choices I have made and their outcome. Many married women with children would say the same thing. If I found a man who truly wanted to be my equal in parenting I would probably "have it all". We are responsible for raising children in the best possible environment and not have them just for the sake of having them.
Rating:
Summary: Another Attempt to Meddle and Dictate.....
Review: If there was less than one star, I would have chosen zero. Why do so many authors believe they know what is best for women?
Do they really believe we are such incompetents that we NEED advice about how to conduct our lives? Especially disturbing is the trend by authors like Sylvia Ann Hewlett to actually PROMOTE one "traditional" lifestyle for women regardless of diversity, personal tastes, ambitions and preferences. To get married is to be "happier and healthier?" Certainly not always. Not realistic. Also unrealistic is the idea that most women who remain childfree will eventually experience regrets. Simply not true. I know many women who have remained childfree and have absolutely no regrets. I am one. At 56, my very successful career has provided me with all of the nurturing satisfaction I need -- with none of the hassle. Authors like Hewlett are entitled to their opinions. Their motives should be questioned and they must never be taken seriously.
Rating:
Summary: Creating A Life
Review: "Creating A Life" is a courageous and thoughtful book, which challenges conventional wisdoms across the spectrum. Drawing on sobering statistics and moving interviews with successful career women, many of them celebrities, Sylvia Hewlett calls into question whether the "breakthrough generation" really was able "to have it all" --as they claimed women could. What she found in her own generation of 50-somethings has poignant overtones -- talented women who pursued "high-altitude" careers, assuming that they would be able to turn to love and family later, were often mistaken. What they found was that it was far more difficult to find a mate and have a child once they passed thirty-five, notwithstanding ideology, hype and medical miracles. What Hewlett advises the younger generation of women is don't wait: find a man before you become a thirty-something and have children before your fertility declines and complications rise. The problem with that advice, she recognizes, is the price that women who try to combine work and family early in the careers have to pay in the job market --being consigned to "the Mommy-track." It is this book's combination of confessions of unrequited maternity by the first feminist generation and cautionary warnings to the adolescents and twenty-somethings who still think they can have it all that has touched a raw nerve and detonated strong reactions and angry debates. Overlooked in the controversy over the book's implications for individual women is its central point: the importance of changing corporate culture and public policy so that more women can have both rewarding work and satisfying personal lives. Hewlett's proposals for a new paradigm in family policy that would create a user-friendly flexibility are thought-provoking and far-reaching. If adopted, they could make it possible for many more women --and men-- "to have it all," and for our society not to waste precious human resources. Her European examples show that it can be done, if a society decides that it is important to make family a priority --which we say we do in theory but rarely do in practice. At bottom, this is a policy book and Hewlett has put the issue of family policy back on the table. "Creating A Life" should be required reading for all men and women who have thought about creating a life --and even more for those who have yet to do so. It is an important book for all of us to read.
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