THE NEW-FASHIONED PARENT: How to Make Your Family Style Work

A slightly misleading subtitle: this is concerned not with a panoply of family styles but primarily with the ""new"" dual-career family and (incidentally) with the single-parent home. And it's lackadaisical on the issues; though there are bits of information and advice here and there, we're chiefly told how much our family styles have changed and how hard it is on everybody concerned and how we need to keep the old communication channels wide open, etc. No one really has escaped these points at this stage (unless it's by choice), so a book like this has little excuse for being: it falls in the crack between social philosophy and practical guide, and will satisfy neither side. Some suggestions: re-establish and re-evaluate priorities (you can't be all things in career and home); recognize that the men are having a hard time giving up their once-sacrosanct privileges; investigate flextime and job-sharing options; turn off the TV and spend family time together. Both the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject have been explored more fully elsewhere-with particular success in Caroline Bird's The TwoPaycheck Marriage (1979) and Gloria Norris and Jo Ann Miller's The Working Mother's Complete Handbook (1979).