FAMILY TIES, CORPORATE BONDS

by Paula Bernstein ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1985

As a fatherless child whose mother and grandmother worked, Bernstein found a family at 15 by getting a newspaper job--and today more than ever, most of us would allow, workmates, or workplace, or corporations are apt to be ""family."" Bernstein's discussion of this situation doesn't do much to clarify or enhance it, however. On the one hand, she notes that we tend to replicate our own family patterns at work; on the other, we can ""start afresh. . . give ourselves something we missed out on the first time around."" In a corporate setting, we may wrongly expect the organization to protect us; or, if we adopt the right role, we may rise--like the woman who adopted toward her mulish boss the attitude of her own compliant mother, and protected her subordinates from him. (Five years of yes-ing, we hear, took her unconflictedly from billing clerk to bank VP.) The corporate fathers interviewed also look for ""tractability"" and loyalty in their sons (""You don't want to give the stuff away and have it wasted""; ""If they ask for advice and don't take it, I drop them""); to Bernstein, these two gents ""represent the corporate father at his best, transmitting wisdom and experience. . ."" The corporate sons admit to being manipulative--""consciously adopting the manner of a son, or grateful subordinate."" The younger women confessed to deliberately playing the role of daughters, even with men their age. Bernstein offers specks of disjointed advice: how to be a ""dynamic, 'breakthrough mother,'"" not ""the traditional wife-mommy kind""; how to be the respected ""sister,"" not daughter, wife, or mother. Much of this sounds, indeed, like pointers on playing family-games at work--not the insightful exploration initially suggested by the real-life individual who modeled his work-situation after his own expansive, close-knit Italian-American family.

Pub Date: April 1, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1985

Categories: NONFICTION