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Leslie Bennetts is a talented writer. The book is quite interesting. I would recommend it. However, be prepared! Ms. Bennetts has complained that her most ardent critics have not even read the book. Frankly, that could be a blessing. I think they would go from being angry about what they think the book says to enraged about what it really says. Ms. Bennetts maintains that her book is to point out the financial risk that women may not realize they are taking when they decide to give up paid work. She does tell a number of sob stories about mostly upper class women in the northeast whose husbands have divorced them, gotten sick and couldn?t work or other tragedies that put them in desperate financial shape. But it is clear that is not the real agenda. The author has an open disdain for stay at home mothers and homemakers. The comment she makes in reference to Simone de Beauvoir?s 1949 book, The Second Sex, seems to sum up the feelings she espouses in the rest of the book. On page 228 Ms. Bennetts writes, ?Today?s stay at home wives would doubtless recoil at de Beauvoir's description of them as parasites, but it is hard to argue with the fundamental truth of that characterization. When women don?t work they must rely on men to support them. Needless to say, parasites are dependent upon their host for survival. This fact alone is sufficient to belie the current vogue among stay at home wives for pretending they have equal power in their marriages.?
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The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? by Leslie Bennetts
gabelle83, May 3, 2007
Leslie Bennetts is a talented writer. The book is quite interesting. I would recommend it. However, be prepared! Ms. Bennetts has complained that her most ardent critics have not even read the book. Frankly, that could be a blessing. I think they would go from being angry about what they think the book says to enraged about what it really says. Ms. Bennetts maintains that her book is to point out the financial risk that women may not realize they are taking when they decide to give up paid work. She does tell a number of sob stories about mostly upper class women in the northeast whose husbands have divorced them, gotten sick and couldn?t work or other tragedies that put them in desperate financial shape. But it is clear that is not the real agenda. The author has an open disdain for stay at home mothers and homemakers. The comment she makes in reference to Simone de Beauvoir?s 1949 book, The Second Sex, seems to sum up the feelings she espouses in the rest of the book. On page 228 Ms. Bennetts writes, ?Today?s stay at home wives would doubtless recoil at de Beauvoir's description of them as parasites, but it is hard to argue with the fundamental truth of that characterization. When women don?t work they must rely on men to support them. Needless to say, parasites are dependent upon their host for survival. This fact alone is sufficient to belie the current vogue among stay at home wives for pretending they have equal power in their marriages.?(4 of 9 readers found this comment helpful)