The cheerful pun of the title is one of the liveliest moments in a tangled scrutiny of mothers and fathers who share parenting equally. This study of dual-earner couples with children was funded by the National Science Foundation in order to explore if, in fact, it was possible for working women to split equally with their partners the notorious “second shift”—the responsibility for childcare and household chores that comes after a full day at work. Deutsch (Psychology/Mt. Holyoke Coll.) and her team initially interviewed 429 couples and ended up with 44 who met the criteria for parents who shared equally (50—50) or nearly equally (60—40), plus a group of couples who worked alternating shifts and a third group whose division of labor was unequal (75—25) with the burden usually falling on the mother. Most of the couples were white, educated, and middle class; the alternating shift group fell into the blue-collar category. The emphasis was not on who did the dishes or even on equal time with the children, but on whether the responsibility was truly divided. That includes the “mental work” of managing the routine, like keeping track of children’s schedules or noticing that baby needs new shoes. It will come as no surprise that Deutsch found breaking out of traditional gender roles was extremely difficult for her subjects. She tries to tease out the issues involved, including the demands of biology (breast feeding, for instance), men’s reluctance to take on a “feminine” role, women’s reluctance to give up the status of mother, the lack of role models. Jobs are a stumbling block. “Careers are [still] designed for men” who have wives at home to support them, says Deutsch. Equal parenting demands “family careers,” with shorter hours, more flexibility for family emergencies and plenty of compromise by both parents regarding ambition and direction. A motley profusion of anecdotes and quotes offers little support for the author’s lame if hopeful conclusion: “Why not equality?”
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-674-36800-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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