MOMMY WARS 英文原版

With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of awoman’s life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not onlydivides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individualmothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there.As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother ofthree, she has lived and breathed every side of the “mommy wars.”Rather than just watch the battles rage, Steiner decided to dosomething about it. She commissioned twenty-six outspoken mothersto write about their lives, their families, and the choices thathave worked for them. The result is a frank, surprising, andutterly refreshing look at American motherhood.

Ranging in age from twenty-five to seventy-two and scattered acrossthe country from New Hampshire to California, these mothers reflectthe full spectrum of lifestyle choices. Women who have been homewith the kids from day one, moms who shuttle from full-time officejobs to part-time at-home work, hard-driving executives who put inseventy-hour-plus weeks: they all get a turn. The one thing thesewomen have in common, aside from having kids, is that they’re allterrific writers.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley vividly recounts how hergeneration stormed the American workplace–only to take refuge athome when the workplace drove them out. Lizzie McGuire creatorTerri Minsky describes what it felt like to hear her kids scream “Ihope you never come back!” when she flew to L.A. to launch the showthat made her career. Susan Cheever, novelist, biographer, and NewYork Newsday columnist, reports on the furious battles between thestroller pushers and the briefcase bearers on the streets ofManhattan. Lois R. Shea traded the journalistic fast track for ahouse in the country where she could raise her daughter in peace.Ann Misiaszek Sarnoff, chief operating officer of the Women’sNational Basketball Association, argues fiercely that you cancombine ambition and motherhood–and have a blast in theprocess.

Candid, engaging, by turns unflinchingly honest and painfullyfunny, the essays collected here offer an astonishingly intimateportrait of the state of motherhood today. Mommy Wars is abook by and for and about the real experts on motherhood and hardwork: the women at home, in the office, on the job every day oftheir lives.


From the Hardcover edition.