The Washington Post
The vast social forces at work that have changed, probably forever, men's and women's prospects and expectations could not have been permanently forestalled — feminism or no feminism. But Schlafly scores some telling points. Much proposed social legislation does wind up shortchanging stay-at-home mothers by comparison to their full-time working sisters. The byzantine complexities of trying to sort out "comparable worth" — how much is a crane operator "worth" compared to a typist and the like — are unenforceable and unworkable. There are credible studies that raise serious questions about what full-time, nearly dawn to dusk, day care does to infants and toddlers. — Jean Bethke Elshtain
Publishers Weekly
In her foreword, Coulter asserts that Gen-X conservative divas may have sprung from the femme fatale-cum-right-wing wellspring Schlafly established over four decades ago with her group, Eagle Forum. Schlafly's conservative thinking might have been razor-sharp 38 years ago when she wrote her ideological groundbreaker A Choice Not an Echo. In this volume, her rhetoric has retained all of its harshness but lost its intellectual edge; her writing and cant are murky and overwrought. The short essays, written throughout the 1980s and '90s, from the woman Coulter claims singlehandedly defeated the ERA, have snappy titles reminiscent of Coulter's recent Slander but lack substance, cohesion and contemporary knowledge. Schlafly presumes certain ideological and demographic traits (white, middle class, college-educated) to force her arguments that the majority of women neither have to nor want to work. Marriage and motherhood cannot sustain the travail of women working, Schlafly declares; it leads to the disintegration of the family. She cites jobs in general and military jobs in particular as a huge threat to maintaining gender difference. Rammed home in over 50 essays in which she cites unnamed and undated studies, Schlafly's thesis is this: feminism tried to destroy femininity, masculinity, marriage, motherhood and the security of both the economy and family, but has succeeded only in damaging the foundations, not crumbling the whole. Schlafly's politics, while passionate, are as out of date as Trent Lott on race. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
In her hard-charging, biased style, Schlafly once again expounds on the evils of feminism. Schlafly is best known for her role in helping to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and her previous work, A Choice Not an Echo. Here, she wastes no time in slaughtering liberals' sacred cows. In the first page of the foreword, in fact, we read that the author "will always be right" except for "one time" when she was wrong! This sets the tone for the remainder of the book, in which Schlafly holds forth on the usual subjects: marriage, motherhood, the media, the military, women's role in society, and the demise of the feminist revolution. Little is new here; mostly, it is the same old stuff presented in the same old way. Still, the text is organized in clear, concise blocks that will appeal to the pick-and-choose readers who can only take small amounts of dogma at a time. Essential for maintaining a balanced collection on feminism, this is suitable for all public and academic libraries.-Melody Ballard, Washoe Cty. Lib. Syst., Reno, NV Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
