In This Issue:
We focus on the big question...Is the time right to return to work?
For some women this question is easily answered, perhaps their financial situation has forced the decision or they are simply quite certain that the time is right. But for most women, this question is quite difficult to answer. Take Elizabeth, for example. It seemed like every month she came to a different conclusion and then finally when she made up her mind to jump back in, her mother-in-law got ill and moved in with her causing her to rethink her decision yet again.
If you are, like Elizabeth, struggling with this question, you may find some help in this month's newsletter with the Back to Work Readiness Test, a review of the book The Ten Year Nap and an excellent profile from Philadelphia magazine of five women's journey back to work.
The Ten Year Nap
Reviewed by Nirvani Head
Meg Wolitzer’s novel ‘The Ten Year Nap’ is the story of four friends, educated women now in their forties, who gave up their work and careers to stay home and raise their children. The setting is New York City and the main character is Amy Lamb, a former T&E lawyer with a ten year old son who spends her days as a stay-at-home mom. Amy’s best friend is Jill Hamlin, an academic achiever who worked briefly in film, who recently moved to the suburbs with her husband and adopted daughter Nadia. Also in the group are Roberta Sokolov, an artist who worked as a puppeteer and Karen Yip who worked as a statistical analyst. Their lives are a mix of “boring times” and “sudden bursts of the extraordinary”, and they question whether or not they should go back to that corporate world that neither needs nor wants them in the same way their children do.
“The Ten Year Nap” has a weak plot and not much happens to any of the four characters, but nevertheless, the reader is drawn in and held captive by Wolitzer’s acute observations of the mundane lives of these women, and the question of what now, as their children need less care as they get older. As Amy thinks to herself: “It was perfectly okay to be a stay-at-home mom with a real political consciousness that extended beyond the act of packing organic sunflower cookies and pesticide free juice boxes into her children’s lunch bags. It was perfectly okay to be one of the passionate, caring mothers who thought about the horrors of the larger world and did what she could, in her small way, and then picked up her kids at the end of the day and brought them home – until one day, when the children grew up and left. And then what will you do then? she often asked herself. How will you bear the rest of your life?” (162). It is this question that forms the threshold of the novel, the identity crisis through which many educated stay-at-home mothers must navigate.
It is with keen insight and some humor that Wolitzer explores how leaving the work force and becoming a stay-at-home mother affects the marriages and identities of the women in her book. Amy once confessed, “I am lost in the woods in the middle of my life.” Jill “imagined that her education would lead her to more education, which somehow would lead her and everyone she knew to a more formidable life.” While at times the characters can be irritating in their whining or pettiness, we also realize that they have become our friends, women we care about and empathize with. ‘The Ten Year Nap’is a compelling portrayal of the emotional challenges and struggles of being a wife and stay-at-home mother, and it deftly explores the ways we define ourselves by these roles. I’d like to think that in these characters Wolitzer has broadened the concept of feminism, through choice and individuality. The end of the novel with its brief description of where these women end up certainly suggests it.
From Philadelphia Magazine:
The Existential Crisis of the Wait-at-Home Mom
“The first generation of Philly women who “opted out” in order to stay home with their kids is now ready for what’s next. Trouble is, opting back in can be pretty scary when you aren’t even sure who you are anymore.
Five women come together for a conversation that no men would ever need to have — what’s a girl to do when kids come along?
THEIR KIDS ARE in school. Their husbands are at work. It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday morning, and these women have nothing they need to do.
Sure, they could be playing tennis. Or organizing the silent auction for the Lower Merion High fund-raiser. Or calling their friends to
meet them in a few hours for lunch at Du Jour in Haverford. They aren’t, though.” [read entire article]
The Back To Work Readiness Test
Does this sound like you? You were a career woman, then a mom, and now you're wondering what will act three of your life hold? Maybe going back to work is on your radar screen but you are not sure you're ready.
If you have been asking yourself the same question, I invite you to take a ten question quiz.
Click "send" at the end and we will analyze your answers and email back a report. If you want an even more personalized response from us, you can add typed comments after any or all of the questions.
All of your answers and comments will be kept completely confidential and we will not share your information with anyone. Enjoy the quiz and feel free to forward it to your friends.
