Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Profiles of formerly professionals turned SAHM
Review: For all the women who have left a career to stay home with their children, this book will ring familiar chords. The authors, both journalists, have interviewed dozens of professional women who have "backburnered" their careers in a conscious choice to raise families at home full time. What Do You Do? is not only a dreaded question for the formerly professional, but in this book it is a segue into examining the more interesting element of bringing the professional skills and experience into the home in order to enhance family life. These women have chosen to stay at home with their families, but they are not fading away or losing touch with their professional abilities. The focus of this book is the way in which these women use their professional skills and abilities, education and experience to great advantage in the organization and running of daily Family Life. Many of the women interviewed refer to themselves as the CEO or COO of the Family. The stories are inspiring and thought-provoking. If you've wondered how professional women can "give up" their careers to stay home with their children and remain sane, these women will teach you that there is much more to being a SAHM than the stereotypes we've all heard. If you are one of the many women who have chosen this path, this book will both validate many of your own feelings and experiences, as well as inspire you in. This is a book about women who give of themselves to the people they love most. Most do not consider they are "sacrificing" their careers, but rather they are using their abilities and experience to enhance their own lives and the lives of those they love. Worth a look. Christina Raley Managing Editor...
Rating: 
Summary: Laziness Justified
Review: I agree with the reviewer who said that this is just an excuse for lazy women who don't want to join the REAL world and work for a living. Most women today work full-time and do all the household chores and tend to the children. It's also time for husbands to take on some of that responsibility as well. Also, we set a better example for our daughters when they can be proud of their mothers who are not simply "hubby's little helper" (unpaid prositute, cook and house-cleaner). Get out and earn your way in the world ladies. Money is Power!
Rating:
Summary: It's All Women's Fault, Again!
Review: I found this book very disturbing. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind women who choose to stay home and take care of their children. It's their choice. However, plodding through this simple book, I was horrified when I got to the chapter where it was implied that working mothers were responsible for the Columbine massacre as well as the rest of the country's current tragedies and troubles. I personally find this female backlash very insulting. My mother worked from the time I could crawl and I have never thought about suicide, bringing a gun to school, or ever harming another human being. I have never been in jail and I am a successful, well-adjusted and content individual. Kaufman and Quigley should be recognized for their achievements in the fields of education and freelance writing, however, they don't understand how things work in the real world. In the real world, people can't just decide to write a book or an article after raising their kids. For them back to work means much, much more and many of them, when they return to work, are pained to find that their jobs have been given to much younger and much more experienced women who did not spend too much time out of the job market. They realize that they've lost years of valuable experience and now they are too old to re-learn (or learn, for that matter) what everbody else already knows. Getting back in is really tough. A long hiatus is definitely not recommended. I guess if you've married well and you don't have to work for a living, you can enjoy the luxury of being a stay-at-home-mom (and yes it is a luxury - my mom worked full-time, while raising a family).
Rating: 
Summary: Not why I chose to stay home
Review: I purchased this book after seeing the authors at a book store lecture and book-signing event sponsored by my local Mothers and More chapter. Even then, it left some lingering doubts, but reading the book increased my doubts and brought up many more criticisms. I don't disagree for a second that it is a worthwhile endeavor to be a full-time parent and raise your child(ren). I am a veterinarian and worked half-time after the birth of my first child and left paid employment altogether for 18 months after the birth of my second. What disturbed me about this book were the generalizations the authors made about women who do the same thing or the opposite and why women can and should make this decision. I really doubt that most women stay home after they have children in order to support their husband's career, but the authors seem convinced that this is a primary motivator. They also discuss the myriad of activities these women are engaging in to the point of not being at home. I must be missing something, because with a preschooler and a toddler, my volunteering opportunities are pretty limited. This corresponds quite well to other reviewers' comments that the women selected are not particularly representative of working women as a whole. In fact, many of the women interviewed are in highly selective fields such as runway modeling or the wives of very public or well-off men, such as professional athletes and coaches, Cabinet members, or world-renowed surgeons. I also felt that the authors failed to address an important societal/political/economic issue - that being why only women are expected to be and allowed to be full-time parents. While they mention that it just doesn't seem acceptable for men to take advantage of parental leave options, they don't even suggest that this may be something requiring change. Nor do they address the fact that only women seem to face significant economic costs imposed by child-bearing and -rearing. They also do not address very well the difficulty in staying home for those in highly technical and rapidly evolving fields. Anyone in medicine or other scientific areas knows that keeping up with new developments is very challenging and it is almost a given that you will have to bring your technical skills back up to speed after time away. Finally, after I finished the book and was comparing my thoughts to those of others who wrote reviews here, I was surprised to see at least 2 of the reviews written by women who were surveyed and interviewed for the book, and yet that fact was not mentioned in their rave reviews. Overall, while I am glad that the authors have highlighted and praised the option women have to leave paid employment and raise their children, I found their other conclusions less edifying.
Rating:
Summary: Not why I chose to stay home
Review: I purchased this book after seeing the authors at a book store lecture and book-signing event sponsored by my local Mothers and More chapter. Even then, it left some lingering doubts, but reading the book increased my doubts and brought up many more criticisms. I don't disagree for a second that it is a worthwhile endeavor to be a full-time parent and raise your child(ren). I am a veterinarian and worked half-time after the birth of my first child and left paid employment altogether for 18 months after the birth of my second. What disturbed me about this book were the generalizations the authors made about women who do the same thing or the opposite and why women can and should make this decision. I really doubt that most women stay home after they have children in order to support their husband's career, but the authors seem convinced that this is a primary motivator. They also discuss the myriad of activities these women are engaging in to the point of not being at home. I must be missing something, because with a preschooler and a toddler, my volunteering opportunities are pretty limited. This corresponds quite well to other reviewers' comments that the women selected are not particularly representative of working women as a whole. In fact, many of the women interviewed are in highly selective fields such as runway modeling or the wives of very public or well-off men, such as professional athletes and coaches, Cabinet members, or world-renowed surgeons. I also felt that the authors failed to address an important societal/political/economic issue - that being why only women are expected to be and allowed to be full-time parents. While they mention that it just doesn't seem acceptable for men to take advantage of parental leave options, they don't even suggest that this may be something requiring change. Nor do they address the fact that only women seem to face significant economic costs imposed by child-bearing and -rearing. They also do not address very well the difficulty in staying home for those in highly technical and rapidly evolving fields. Anyone in medicine or other scientific areas knows that keeping up with new developments is very challenging and it is almost a given that you will have to bring your technical skills back up to speed after time away. Finally, after I finished the book and was comparing my thoughts to those of others who wrote reviews here, I was surprised to see at least 2 of the reviews written by women who were surveyed and interviewed for the book, and yet that fact was not mentioned in their rave reviews. Overall, while I am glad that the authors have highlighted and praised the option women have to leave paid employment and raise their children, I found their other conclusions less edifying.
Rating:
Summary: Taking the social stigma out of staying at home
Review: I recommend this book for any former career woman who sacrificed her job for the sake of the kids. As an educated, former workaholic who is taking a few years off to raise two small children, I found "And What Do You Do?'' encouraging. The authors tracked down dozens of women who made the same choice I did, and learned that their former illustrious careers didn't in fact suffer much when they decided to re-enter the workforce. I've been out of the rat race (although not completely; I work part-time) for three years now and still fret whether I've squandered my hard-earned career. This book gave me the assurance I needed - that my skills will be in demand after I've shepherded my children through their early years. One anecdote made me laugh out loud: After one mom announced she was going back to work after a 16-year absence, her teenaged son lamented: "But mom, we'll be latchkey children.'' The mom replied, "At your age, you'll be latchkey adults.'' The book also serves to remind stay-at-home moms that we're not alone, that there are thousands if not millions of us out there sacrificing for our kids and feeling oddly old-fashioned about our lifestyles. Of course, the book chose not to focus on women whose husbands care more about their careers than their families. Nor did the authors interview women who stay home because they live with men who think that "women's lib'' is the devil's handiwork. The book also ignored families whose religious beliefs dictate that the woman stay home to tend the hearth. But I suppose a discussion of every type of family situation would have made this book very long and not particulary new.
Rating:
Summary: Not very good
Review: I think this book fails to touch a broad spectrum of SAHM's. The women profiled in the book were affluent and so the idea of staying home to raise children is more socially acceptable for them. I think its based more on social aspects than on a real desire to nurture the child. Still after hearing about all the activities these women involve themselves in, I don't see how they really have time to raise and nurture their children. IN essence they are staying homew because they don't want to actually hold down a job. I was very disturbed at the constant mantra of putting your husband and children first. By the end of the book, if I were a weak person, I would wrongfully think that if I have children and don't stay at home, that not only will I be a bad mother with children who hate me, but my marriage will fail because I did not coddle my husband and put his needs abouve mine. Why, I have to ask, would anyone want a marriage of this kind? The authors justify husbands taking a less active role in making the marriage work and in raising the children. Frankly I do not appreciate the jibs at working mothers. A good book about SAHM's would show a broad spectrum and also would focus on celebrating staying at home rather than knocking working mothers. The authors make a great deal of generalizations that are really not true. The happiness they generally speak of that SAHM's moms have is just not something that I have encountered when being around SAHM's. They are the women whose husbands are having affairs because the wife has no interest in intimacy or because the husband is no longer intrigued by the wife. They are the ones who begin to feel burned out and moan about people taking them for granted. I resent the authors blatantly saying that having a woman at home makes for better and more stable marriages. I fail to see how these marriages are TRUE partnerships. All in all I think the authors wasted a great deal of their time in writing this bok and its disappointing because both of them had carrers in writing and s I would expect better work from writers.
Rating: 
Summary: I chose to stay at home.
Review: I think this is an excellent book. It profiles lots of different women who have chosen to stay home and take care of their families. I can assure you that none of the women profiled is "lazy" as one cusromer reviewer put it. As one of the women interviewed for this book, I would like to say that I am certainly not. I work very hard. In fact, I work harder now than I did when I had a full time job outside of the home. I think the book is well written and has helped me reconfirm my belief that I made the decision to stay at home full time for now to be home with my young children.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, someone understands my life!
Review: No one has a chance to ask me just what it is that I do, they are too exhausted after listening to the list of daily chores, tasks, and responsibilities, and that's just for my volunteer jobs! I am one of many "Mothers at Home" interviewed by Mary Quigley for this most excellent book. While I choose to be at home with my children in order to raise my own children, it soon became clear that inbetween meals and laundry that there was some time to participate in the community at large (as long as I could always have a baby on my hip.) By the time Mary got to me, my life was filled with opportunities that never came my way when I worked 9 to 5. And I'm not the only mother to have discovered this. "And What Do You Do"? is a book that has looked at women like me to find that by staying home women have created incredibly interesting lives doing everything but waxing the floors. Of course, we knew that already. But if you are considering staying home with your babies, if you are working the numbers trying to decide if your family can afford for you to be at home, if you are tired of the daycare routine, if you are in love with your baby and you don't want to leave, then this book will show you that there really is a whole other world out there. It is called real life.
Rating:
Summary: Neither SAHM nor employment is the wrong choice
Review: The problem with this book is that these women are not representative of most SAHMs. It would have been a better book if it had been a real look at SAHM in a less affluent environment, and a discussion of having relationships with employed mothers. I belong to an informal network of working and SAHM mothers, and the lack of conflict is great. These women refuse to allow their husbands to slack off, and they have to do things to protect the family finances as well as keep their training up. They recognize reality (as my family did when my husband was out of work); if you step out of the workplace, you will have to retrain. They also recognize some people can not afford to stay at home. Some women make so little at unskilled work, the family would not have much left over after daycare. Others are training for jobs to raise the family income. It really is a decision that has to be made within the constrainst of what's best for the family. SOmetimes that's employment, sometimes not. The key here is that SAHM and employed mothers have to understand that neither choice is "wrong." Once they understand that, they can make common cause and help each other. As for the Columbine thing, one of the mothers was a SAHM, and one was employed. The boys were mentally ill. Blacming mothers for that is back to the old 50s mentality we NEED to get rid of.
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