POWER AND LOVE: How to Work for Success and Still Care for Others

Less a self-help guide than a recap of gender-socialization--along broad, mostly familiar lines. Thus we hear that all children, regardless of sex, tend to be interested in questions of power from age five until adolescence. At adolescence, the paths of boys and girls usually diverge: girls fantasize romantically, while boys turn inward to develop themselves for future success. At this point psychology professor Forisha-Kovach (Univ. of Michigan, Dearborn) introduces a few new twists. Stage theory plays a part: at midlife, men begin to integrate personal relationships with professional concerns; women, however, find it harder to build a power structure onto the base of interpersonal intimacy (""It appears that for a man to be loving in our society is not as disastrous as for a woman to be powerful""). One problem with the book is that the definitions--of ""power,"" in particular--seem to keep shifting: in the work world, power is associated with success; in romantic relationships, with autonomy. There are many digressions on both subjects--but, overall, not enough new material, or sufficient focus, to warrant the attention of readers exposed to the mass of writing on gender differences.