Maternal misconceptions.(7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don't Mix)(Book Review)

7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don't Mix By Suzanne Venker Spence Publishing, 208 pages, $24.95

In 7 Myths of Working Mothers, Suzanne Venker documents the deterioration of American children's well-being over the past three decades, and she convincingly traces the great majority of it to the effects of mothers' mass movement into the workplace. Most effective is her attention to the causal relationships among the various factors. She notes how the hurried pace of modern family life prevents children from getting enough sleep, how parents' lack of time to prepare healthy meals and monitor children's play (which leads to excessive television watching) increases obesity among the young.

According to Venker, feminists, aided by mass media, the government, and business, have convinced the public that a normal woman cannot be happy with out a career outside the home. Venker refutes this popular notion by demonstrating that most mothers working fulltime outside the home are not happy. And it is natural for women to be concerned about their children in a way that fathers often cannot be. "The reason the women's movement continues to hit a brick wall is because its platform demands that women put themselves first--and yet the overwhelming majority of women discover, once they become mothers, that they no longer want to," Venker writes.

Fathers don't "have it all" either. A parent working full-time outside the home (as most fathers do) cannot provide more than "peripheral parenting." Women have been forced into "chasing a dream that none of us, male or female, has ever achieved--or ever will achieve."

Venker also documents just how little a couple gains ...