Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober are professionals, wives, and mothers with five young children between them. They understand the challenges and rewards of two-career households. They also know that families thrive not in spite of working mothers but because of them. You can have a great career, a great marriage, and be a great mother. The key is tapping into your best resource and most powerful ally -- the man you married.
After interviewing hundreds of parents and employers, surveying more than a thousand working mothers, and combing through the latest government and social science research, the authors have discovered that kids, husbands, and wives all reap huge benefits when couples commit to share equally as breadwinners and caregivers. Mothers work without guilt, fathers bond with their kids, and children blossom with the attention of two involved parents.
The starting point? An attitude shift that puts you on the road to 50/50, plus the positive step-by-step advice in this book.
Here are real-world solutions for parents who want to get ahead in their careers and still get to their children's soccer games; strategies for working mothers facing gender bias in the workplace; advice to fathers new to the home front; and tips for finding 50/50 solutions to deal with issues of money, time, and much more.
From "baby boot camp" for new dads to exactly what to say when negotiating a leave with the boss, this savvy book offers fresh ideas to today's families. It also offers encouragement, hope, and confidence to any woman who has ever questioned her choices regarding work and family.
Website: http://www.gettingto5050.com/index.htm
More on the book:
GETTING TO 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All, presents an action plan for couples based on the simple belief that in order to achieve a successful work-life balance, there must be equal participation of both parents, offering a blueprint on how to successfully work with your husband, your boss, and yourself to fully embrace a 50/50 solution and tackle the conflicting priorities of child care, job demands, and home life responsibilities.
The book provides steps for:
A 50/50 Mindset: Women need to take a stand in the home and in the work place. In order to get to 50/50, they must fully commit to letting husbands do half and relinquish some control. When women minimize their needs (at home and at work) they loose out on quality home/kid time, jobs, promotions, and benefits. Women and men must leave behind outdated thinking in order to change the status quo and work without worry and parent with joy.
A 50/50 Home Life: First step, replace the "I" with "We" and visualize yourselves as equally valuable partners. Second step, talk about who will do what as soon as you can-and make it a lifelong discussion. When fathers are engaged at home as equally as their wives, the workplace becomes a friendlier environment for mothers. Meers and Strober clearly illustrate how men benefit from the 50/50 solution, and they show women how not to sabotage their husbands' unique parenting efforts.
A 50/50 Work Life: Meers and Strober help identify a 50/50 employer, script how to tell your boss that you are pregnant, detail effective ways to prepare for maternity leave and make yourself an indispensable go-to person. They provide men with tools on how to lay the groundwork to negotiate paternity leave and flextime and they offer advice to both women and men on how to successfully integrate back into work life once the baby is born, and much more.
Buy the book on Amazon: Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All by Sharing It All
