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Summary: An excellent analysis of shared parenting and equality
Review: As a member of a women's studies faculty who has a profesional interest in issues of childcare, labor and equality and as a co-parent of two young children, I found the book to be fascinating and thought-provoking.
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Summary: Halving It All shows that equality works.
Review: HALVING IT ALL shows that equality in parenting is not onlypossible, but practical. Yes, there are obstacles to overcome, but theequal sharers I interviewed show that parents can figure out how to work together to get everyone dressed, fed, and out the door happy in the morning. The Dads do their share of tickling, roughhousing,, and watching their kids' sports events, but they also get up at night to soothe infants and leave their jobs as often as their wives to care for sick children. That "motley collection of anecdotes and quotes" came from a diverse group of real families--not just college professors-- but also, secretaries, lawyers, business owners, and mail carriers. Equality works.
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Summary: This feminist says bah
Review: I agree with Deutsch that it's great when husband and wife both take responsibility for their home, their children, and their obligations. I disagree with her idea that households that don't manage to split everything 50-50 are somehow not in a state of feminist grace. If two people consider each other's needs and voice in the marriage to be equally important and valuable, who is Deutsch to say they're unequal simply because one of them has chosen to stay home?My husband and I both have master's degrees. His career is humming along nicely, whereas I'm feeling a desire to make a career change. But we haven't started a family yet, and we're beginning to run out of time for that. We considered all of our options, and finally decided that what makes sense right now is to start a family, with me quitting my current career (which I don't like) and staying home. It's what feels right, it's what I want, and we can do it. But by Deutsch's criteria, we have an unequal marriage. Interesting. Aside from philosophical disagreements, I have some problems with how she conducted her research. She seems to have crafted her research to confirm most of what she wanted to confirm, rather than let the data say what it will. Her interpretations of survey participants' quotes also seemed slanted toward the ideas she wanted to support. Ambivalence expressed by a spouse in an "unequal" marriage was often taken as confirmation of the badness of "inequality", while ambivalence expressed by a member of an "equal" spouse was glossed over or ignored. But probably the greatest problem with this book is that Deutsch seems to want to replace one straitjacket ("Man is the breadwinner, Woman is the nurturer") with another ("Every couple must split every obligation down the middle"). We're in the middle of transition with respect to gender roles, and I think most couples are just having to do the best they can with the options they have available. Flexibility and fluidity are needed now, not another straitjacket by which women and their choices must be judged. All that having been said, I give this book 3 stars because I do strongly agree that men need to be more involved in raising their children and keeping up the home -- because it's what's fair to their wives, necessary for the household, and good for children.
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Summary: A must read for working parents and social scientists.
Review: I loved this book - finished it in a few days (including footnotes) and have been recommending it (via the information highway) to everyone I know. It is extremely well written and should appeal to a diversified audience - not only working parents, but also anyone interested in examining the dynamics of family life in contemporary society, and the impact of family life on individual family members. Halving It All provides an engrossing and richly textured portrait of families in which child care is equally shared. The author allows her subjects to speak for themselves, while skillfully parsing out and presenting the issues and paradoxes which are at play in the process of "halving it all." The result is a rare combination: a book which is enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring. I was struck by the way it illuminated the issue of fairness and equity in examining gendered roles and relationships in the context of the family. It seems to me there are remarkably few treatments of this subject which manage to be so even handed yet forthright in setting out a position. I hope this book will be read and discussed by parents, as well as utilized by academics in a variety of disciplinary approaches to the family and gender studies.
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Summary: A nice start but much left to be said
Review: I read this book as a white collar professional who shares childcare equally with my spouse, using flextime to make the scheduling work. I was interested in getting insight into how other couples handle the stresses of equal care. I had lots of moments reading the book when I said "I recognize that situation" but very few in which I said "that's an idea that can help me." I was also frustrated that the author chose to exclude white collar families from the alternate shift chapter (even though flextime enables such solutions) since that chapter would have been very relevant for me. In short, the book illustrates that equal sharing does happen but comes up a little short on ways to make it work. I also found the periodic prosletyzing for daycare annoying -- many people I know do split shifts and the equivalent because they find daycare unsatisfying or inadequate.
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Summary: A must-read book for parents of the 90s
Review: I'm not a person who generally reads sociological studies--mostly because the academic jargon does not seem reader-friendly. But Halving it All is a book I literally could not put down. I found the couples interesting, the problems realistic, and the commentary very helpful in understanding just why what seems an easy concept (equal parenting) is so tricky. A concept like unequal "economy of gratitude" (i.e., men get more points for doing domestic labor than women) really helped me understand something about the struggles in my own marriage--this is just one example. What I most appreciated was that this author did not have a "one-size-fits-all" approach for equal parenting. This is an area where there are no easy answers, but reading this book made me believe that equally parenting is not an impossible dream.
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Summary: Book ignores the needs of children
Review: This book is a disappointment. It could be so much more than an academic recounting of how couples share responsibility for maintaining a home and raising children. What frustrates me most with this book is the complete ignoring of children's emotional and developmental needs in the equation of parental responsibility. I don't accept the argument that children need to be placed in day care in order for parents to be able to both have careers. Why isn't it possible for both parents to reduce their work hours and spend time with their children. Not only would the children benefit from this increased time with their parents, but parents would also benefit emotionally from a greater connection with their children. As an aside, readers will be shocked at the traditional attitudes of some of the fathers that the author interviews. For instance, fathers who completely ignore their children's requests for assistance because that's "women's work."
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Summary: Book ignores the needs of children
Review: This book is a disappointment. It could be so much more than an academic recounting of how couples share responsibility for maintaining a home and raising children. What frustrates me most with this book is the complete ignoring of children's emotional and developmental needs in the equation of parental responsibility. I don't accept the argument that children need to be placed in day care in order for parents to be able to both have careers. Why isn't it possible for both parents to reduce their work hours and spend time with their children. Not only would the children benefit from this increased time with their parents, but parents would also benefit emotionally from a greater connection with their children. As an aside, readers will be shocked at the traditional attitudes of some of the fathers that the author interviews. For instance, fathers who completely ignore their children's requests for assistance because that's "women's work."
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Summary: A must-read for prospective parents
Review: This book is enormously important. My wife and I have not had children yet ourselves, and coming upon this book struck me as extraordinarily fortunate, as it lays out very clearly the pitfalls we will encounter in our pursuit of a fair distribution of labor. We loved the book so much that we went back and bought four more copies to give away to our pregnant friends. Deutsch's meditations on the extensive interviews she did with 150 couples are remarkable, expecially her exposure of the inconsistencies and double standards that we all take for granted. It has been enormously satisfying reading, not just for the well-executed analyses, but also because her arguments are so relevant to daily life. All that research, all the connections she makes, will save us a lot of trial and error and confusion, like a map through a minefield. I've never reviewed a book on Amazon before, despite being a customer for several years. I just think this book needs to be read by everyone contemplating raising kids (while retaining sanity) today.
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Summary: a great book for parents struggling to Halve It All
Review: This is a great book. It provides concrete examples of how real people everyday are balancing the demands of work and child raising. It underscores the reality that if you want to have an "equal" relationship with your spouse, both of you have to make sacrifices. This book proves that shared parenting is possible. Halving it All might be threatening to some because it shows that shared parenting works when both parents take their parenting role seriously and don't look to their employers or government to solve the family/work dilema.This book offers helpful insights and affirmation for those already involved in shared parenting relationships and inspiration to those who desire more equality in their parenting/family situation. This book may not sit well with spouses who are not interested in doing their fair share since it handily reveals that shared parenting is indeed possible through detailed examples of many couples who are making it work.
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