Do you still care about the glass ceiling?

Are you troubled by the forecast that if change continues at the same slow pace as it has done for the past fifty years, it could take 40 years—or until 2059—for women to finally reach pay parity? That for women of color, the rate of change is likely to be even slower: That Hispanic women may have to wait until 2224 and Black women until 2130 for equal pay?

Whether you call it unpaid work, division of labor, or life work balance if you're talking about it or its keeping you up at night, chances are you're probably female.

In Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy's book we hear first hand from married women in dual career households who find their work lives turned upside down once they become mothers.

But that's not the only (or even the "real") story of Opting Back In: What Really Happens When Mothers Go Back to Work. We hear from single mothers and divorced mothers too and that's important because treating work like it's an option is a luxury beyond many moms. Work's the way many moms pay the rent, make the mortgage, feed and clothe their kids. For others it's how they keep their sanity, stay part of their industries, or keep their careers alive while they're caregiving.

The stories of the women Stone and Lovejoy interview help everyone understand that "opting back in" is often not so much a binary choice, as it is part of a continuum of who working women are: real, complex, pragmatic.

Longitudinal studies were completed and reported very thoroughly. The authors write about women who opted out of full-time employment for a while after children, and the different ways they chose going back to work and sometimes getting into fields that had nothing to do with the professions before children. Consequences are discussed.

Recommended for academic libraries with women's studies collections and public libraries.