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Creating a Life
Book

Creating a Life

Professional Women and the Quest for Children

Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Miramax, 2002

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Women everywhere are talking about Creating A Life, which exploded into the US media with a controversial and disturbing message: Career women are waiting too long to have children! Despite the uproar it has caused, Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s analysis of the situation is actually quite evenhanded, even if she is prone to overgeneralization. Hewlett does not attack childless women – as many have accused – rather, she logically assesses the reasons that so many highly successful women do not have kids. Her prescriptions for the problem of high-achiever childlessness might not win her any friends in feminist camps, but nevertheless, getAbstract highly recommends that all professional women (and their husbands or potential husbands) read this book and decide for themselves.

Take-Aways

  • Most women, including those who have thrived in formerly male-dominated areas of business, want to have children.
  • About one-third to one-half of all high-achieving women don’t have children.
  • Many women face the choice of remaining childless or stepping off the career ladder.

About the Author

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and author of several books, including When the Bough Breaks, winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Prize, and The War Against Parents, co-written with Cornel West. She is the founder and chair of the National Parenting Association. She was inspired to write the book due to her own problems with several miscarriages and a late-in-life birth of a daughter when she was 51.

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