|
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $1.00
You Save: 96%
Product Details:
Type: Hardcover
Item#: c5497
ISBN#: 189062618x
Reader Rating:
read the reviews
submit a review
|
|
America's new work ethic: we're dying of it, warns this challenging book
There's No Place Like Work
by Brian Robertson
The Puritans would gasp. The pioneers would shake in their boots. The 1950s breadwinner would shudder. We're working harder than ever, but the old Protestant work ethic has nothing to do with it. Once we worked to support wife and children. Today, we work in spite of them. Once we worked as a means to an end. Today, work and career are ends in themselves. Obsessed with personal fulfillment, dads and moms are fleeing home and hearth, abandoning natural ties to their children and replacing the social support of home and community with that of the workplace.
(continued from above)
Brian Robertson hits the nail on the head:
"Something is wrong with our whole concept of work -- its purpose and meaning ... the way the demands of the workplace increasingly pull people away from their obligation at home."
The shift is pretty much complete. The nation's social center has already uprooted itself from the home and planted itself in the workplace. The home has been transformed from haven to hotel, and the social consequences, just now surfacing, are staggering. To be sure, the government and the economy have played important roles in the shift. But the heart of the problem is in the heart of the people. The virtues of Christian America have been replace with the values of secular America. Taxes, regulations, the cost of living, demands and expectations of employers, salaries and wages ... they all reflect the new popular mood of self-love.
But isn't Robertson preaching to the choir? Or have even good Americans been tainted by the new work ethic? Answer honestly: Which of us hasn't sacrificed family for work now and again? And despite the calls by conservatives for profamily legislation, is our view of home vs. career what it would have been a hundred years ago? Fifty years ago? The choir's in danger, and Robertson guides us through the minefields, shows us ways to cope, and gives us the ammunition we need to make a difference.
Sons and daughters, wives and husbands, sacrificed on the office altar
- The business of America is ... well, anything but child rearing. Why Coolidge would roll over in his grave
- "I gave at the office." And exercised there ... got a health checkup there ... partied there ... ate dinner there ... saw a professional counselor there ... took a class there ... hired a babysitter there ...
- Ever hear of the "family wage"? Answer yes, and you're showing your age. How we forced businesses to give up this noble practice, and why even conservatives, alas, aren't fighting for its return
- How America punishes stay-at-home moms ("parasites")
- When was the last time you were "caught" leaving the office at 5:00? At 5:30?
- Why even some of our academic elite are having second thoughts about single-parent homes. The key issue that keeps them from confessing in public (a snare for many conservatives too)
- The history of the devaluation of motherhood. Robertson takes you step by step through the degenerative process
- The aim of the early feminists: to protect the original domestic relationship
- Sobering statistic: the percentage of U.S. families now considered classical (i.e., what nearly all were a generation ago)
- Do you need evidence that daycare doesn't work? It's here, and up to date
- How an absent mother -- and father -- cheat their young child. The three most common developmental impairments (all serious)
- The teenage years, time for Mom to restart her career? For Dad to take that challenging new position? Only if you've swallowed the new work ethic
- Six public policy recommendations that would reverse the antifamily trend in Congress, restore families to economic health, and reduce the burden on taxpayers
- Old-fashioned virtues that must be revived if families are to survive
- Positive developments, including encouragement from families who have bucked the trend -- at great sacrifice
Although more and more parents profess the need to spend more time at home, some signs are pointing the other way. For example, studies show that very few employees jump at options such as job sharing, part time, flextime, or work-at-home. It seems that the mere existence of such options makes us feel better. The dream might be with the family, but the reality is more time at work. Brian Robertson writes with authority, but not to soothe. Some Club members may be disturbed by this or that opinion. Most will give Robertson their undivided attention. And all will learn a little and a grow a little. There's No Place Like Work is surely one of the urgent stories of our time.
Click here to submit a review
 Lawrence Gnass
Brain Robertson has written a factual and thoroughly researched book with much historical insight regarding our shift from having a "job", to having a "career." This materialistic preoccupation with with equating one's self-worth with their degrees and professional accomplishments has done much to destroy the harmony of the American family. We are led to believe that nothing of a fulfilling or lasting value comes out of the home, it's just a place to check in for meals and a nap before we do the
fulfilling task in the workplace. Chapter two is an excellent source for the evolution of American
feminism from seeking protection for women in the workplace, to a push to get women into the workplace at all costs. A great analogy in chapter two quotes Teddy Roosevelt as comparing a mother with a soldier. A soldier sacrifices for his country, in the same way a mother sacrifices for her country, and a woman who would deliberately forgo these blessings, is like a soldier who runs in battle. An enlightning and enjoyable read.
|
|
Continue the review below...
