Remaking Motherhood
**If you are a working mother, take time to read this book.** If you are a mother that works, you are probaly familiar with the feelings of guilt and ambivilance that come with leaving your children for your job. Anita Shreve, an award-winning journalist and working mother herself, finally has some good news for you: working mothers are enhancing their children's lives in many ways that nonworking mothers are not. Remaking Motherhood is the first book to shatter the commonly held beliefs about the negative effects of working mothers on their children. Shreve's impeccable research draws on recent statistics and interviews with scores of psychologists, sociologists, working mothers, *and* their children, to provide a balanced view of these families' risks and rewards. Along with the information on the stresses and strains and -how to handle them- Shreve presents a consensus among professionals that these childrens lives are *enriched*: they are more independent, outgoing, and do better academically, than the children of stay-at-home mothers. But perhaps the most significant factor is how working mothers are educating their children about family roles. The children Shreve interviewed are much more comfortable with the idea of women who combine work and family, and with fathers who share household chores and parenting duties with their partners. These children will grow up with a fuller sense of life's options and a greater sense of harmony about "masculine" and "feminine" pursuits. Revolutionary, compassionate, and enlightening, Remaking Motherhood is crucial reading for every working parent-and anyone thinking of becoming one.