Book Offers Women Formula For Change
If you’ve had it with theories and need hands-on tips for practical change, here you go. Read “The Solution-Oriented Woman,” by Pat Hudson.
Lots of books and tapes on balancing home and work life revolve around creating efficient habits. Some are about creating meaningful relationships so you can keep those overwhelming demands and expectations in perspective. Then, there’s the political and psychological stuff: tomes on how our oppressive patriarchal society dooms women, why we are hopelessly co-dependent, etc.
Mostly, these theories don’t get the dishes done.
In her book, subtitled “Creating the Life You Want,” Hudson stresses how to determine what smart changes women can make to get what they want without embracing victimhood, martyrdom or manipulation. (Drat! There go my three specialties.) She takes some of the action-oriented advice from business big shots and tailors it to fit women’s real lives, which most business books don’t. For example, Hudson writes about Suzanne, who “bears primary responsibility for taking care of the everyday needs of her family and marital relationship.”
Hudson continues: “She worries about her looks in a way few men do. She is struggling to make herself an invaluable asset to the business for which she works. She questions the value of marriage as a genuine source of support. Suzanne’s life is like the one I lived for most of my adult life. It isn’t a nightmare, and it certainly could be worse. But it also could be better. A lot better.”
Then came a divorce.
“Like many women, I have had the experience of trying to juggle a career and single parenting,” Hudson says. “At the time of the divorce, my daughter was 14, and my sons were 12 and 4. I remember lying in bed many mornings thinking, ‘Well at least I don’t have a dog that I have to take out in the snow for a walk.’ Overwhelmed was just one of the many feelings I experienced during those years. Fearful about finances, hopeful about the future, relieved of the struggle that I had felt in the marriage, guilty about the unhappiness of my former husband and concerned about the children and what impact the divorce was having on them. All these feelings crowded my mind.”
Then there’s the matter of danger for women. Violence and violation is not unique to women, but the possibility is often in the back of one’s mind, if not one’s history.
Hudson rightly points her finger at the self-help books for women that blame and label them. She lauds Carol Tavris’ book, “The Mismeasure of Woman,” about how often characteristics of women are labeled pathological, “with the desirable alternative being to act in typical male ways.” Think about the characteristics that “are considered co-dependent: ignoring your own needs for the needs of others; caring about someone’s else’s feelings, successes and failures, protecting others, taking on too much responsibility. Don’t they sound like qualities typical for females in our culture?” she asks.
Hudson’s take is that while we wish, hope and dream for certain cultural changes, each of us individually needs to plow ahead. Her approach is “to give up dwelling on the past, look at where you want to go and find the quickest ways to get there.”
Since we’re all different, cultural conditioning aside, there are different ways that work best for us to make individual change. Since, no one knows for sure why people act as they do, you won’t be able to definitively determine the reasons why we do what we do. And, she argues, when people label their problems, they’re apt to get worse, not better.
What will make women feel better about their harried lives? Learning to think through patterns and communication, how to communicate to get what you need, working with your unconscious by pondering dreams.
Sounds like solutions to me. The book is hardback, $19.95, published by W.W. Norton.
Briefly: If you don’t take a mental health day or two to deal with job stress, you may end up having to take long-term absences requiring medical care. So says an Ohio State University study that found manufacturing workers experiencing lots of work-related stress were no more likely to take one-or-two-day absences than less-stressed employees. Researchers hope their study causes employees and bosses to rethink absenteeism.
If you work outside the home, it’s important that your child be close to you. Women whose child care providers are more than 10 minutes from home are more likely to leave their jobs than mothers with nearby child care arrangements, University of Michigan researchers report.
- Marc Schogol/Philadelphia Inquirer