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Excerpts
The Part-Time Bind
Work-from-home scams target mothers searching for the flexibility that traditional employers don't provide.
Excerpt published in The American Prospect >>
Falling: When Needs Bring Families Down
Some turning points announce themselves clearly. With the snap of a spine or the reading of a good-bye note, everything is suddenly transformed. Other crossroads register only after they’ve passed. Such was the case for Bob and Devorah Gartner. Their troubles mounted gradually and steadily until, at some moment — no one can remember when, exactly — they realized they no longer inhabited their former life. Somehow, their financial comfort — indeed, most comforts — had slipped away.
There was a time when the Gartners had money, not a lot, just enough so they rarely thought about it. Devorah likes to call it their “yuppie phase,” an era that peaked around 2000. As Devorah tells it, the couple practically rode into the twenty-first century on a gilded chariot, or at least a roomy, newish sedan, of which Devorah and Bob then had two. They lived in a co-op they owned in a wealthy Long Island suburb of New York City. Both worked full-time: Bob managed the library of a major law fi rm, and Devorah maintained computer software for another big fi rm. The two had a combined income of more than $ 100,000 and substantial retirement accounts, took regular vacations, bought clothes when they wanted them, and frequently indulged their appetite for nouvelle cuisine.
Almost nine years later, Devorah can recall the details of her former life as if it were yesterday. A voluble woman with a quick wit, straight light-brown hair, and a velvety voice, she squints into the middle distance as she works to remember, as if she could actually see back in time to the pleasant rhythm of their lives, the occasional nights spent out in a jazz bar or lingering over trout almondine and good wine in one of their favorite restaurants. Sitting beside her, Bob, a stocky man with a heavy beard and glasses, nods at the memory. “We were comfortable,” he says. They agree, too, that whenever the exact moment their downward slide began, it was sometime after they got the best of news.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Falling: When Needs Bring Families Down
Chapter 2 - Supermom Returns: Doing It All without Having It All
Chapter 3 - ’Til Dishes Do Us Part: The Problem with Blaming Men
Chapter 4 - The Problems We Wish We Had: A Few Choices, None of Them Good
Chapter 5 - Testing the Bootstraps: What Exactly Is Keeping the Women
of Mississippi Down?
Chapter 6 - Congratulations, Now Back to Work: Keeping Mothers and Babies Apart
Chapter 7 - A Good Day Care is Hard to Find: The Working Mom Crisis
Chapter 8 - The Elusive Part-Time Solution: The Stay-at-Home Mom Crisis
Chapter 9 - Baby Strike: The International Motherhood Experiment
Chapter 10 - The Blame Game: How and Why We Wound Up in Last Place
Epilogue
