The War Against Families: What Women, Parents and Boomers Have in Common
By Suzanne Braun Levine
Huff/Post 50
In her widely debated new book Lean In, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg called it “the ultimate chicken and egg situation.” She is talking about the endless back and forth about what is holding women back from Having It All, whether the system needs to change in order for women to get ahead or whether women need to get ahead to change the system.
“Exclusive”: Enough Mystiques to Go
Around — And This One Is Masculine
By Suzanne Braun Levine, Women’s Media Center In 1963 Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique identified The Problem That Has No Name—a soul-destroying malaise and sense of uselessness that beset the woman who had bought into the “mystique” of perfect wife, homemaker, and mother. Because she wasn’t happy, she thought something was wrong with her. The second […]
“The New Male Mystique” and the
Ongoing Work-Family Conflict
By Suzanne Braun Levine
Back in 2000 my first book Father Courage: What Happens When Men Put Family First came out. In it I talked about men who desperately wanted to be more involved with their families and do more of their share at home but were constrained by the workplace culture and the prevailing image of how a Real Man prioritized his work and family. One told me that he was so afraid of getting caught leaving his office at 6:00 p.m. and being thought not committed to his work that he parked in a distant corner of the parking lot. Another told me that when he went to the playground with his baby daughter on a weekday, people assumed one of two things – that he was unemployed (a failure) or a sexual predator.