leslie-bennetts

No One Reads Those Mom Books, Except When They Do

emily · 04/25/07 10:10AM

In "Mommy Books: More Buzz Than Buyers," Motoko Rich sets out to prove an intriguing thesis: that the whole issue of whether mothers should work or stay at home with their kids is so fraught, so thorny, that women refuse to buy books about it. The article is illustrated by a photo of author Leslie Bennetts and her family, and indeed, the first four paragraphs focus on one SAHM-blogger's dismissal (sans actual reading, of course) of Bennetts' recently-published book. And then we come to this little bundle of confusing.

David Blum's Many Masculine Mistakes

Emily · 04/19/07 05:24PM

David Blum once again demonstrates the rhetorical skill and journalistic integrity that marked his stewardship of the Village Voice with a review of Leslie Bennetts' new book, The Feminine Mistake, in the Sun. But wait! Is it a book review at all, really? It kind of reads more like a vitriolic ad hominem attack on Bennetts, followed by a misguided critique of the only two paragraphs of Bennett's book that Blum seems to have actually read. Odd, but not really so unexpected (to recap: Blum, Sun). It's towards the end, when Blum is criticizing Bennetts for wanting all men to become stay at home dads—something that Bennetts never actually does, or even implies in the book—that things really go off the rails.

Leslie Bennetts' "Feminist" Mistake

Emily · 04/12/07 10:31AM

At Leslie Bennetts' "debate" with Elissa Schappell about her book The Feminine Mistake at the New York Public Library on Tuesday night, there wasn't a lot of dissent in the room. After all, to most of us, Bennett's thesis—that women risk their financial wellbeing and that of their children by becoming "stay at home moms"—seems like the purest common sense. But there was dissent out there, Bennetts told us: She was getting "beaten up by the blogosphere." It turns out that stay at home moms don't like it when you seem to imply that their life plan is a "mistake," and the thing about stay at home moms is, they have a lot of spare computer time (see: UrbanBaby). But despite the fact that the idea of a "debate" between Schappell and Bennetts (pals, moms, Vanity Fair contributing editors both) was as contrived as the latter half of Dana Vachon's novel, we did learn some things from their conversation. First thing: Leslie Bennetts is a badass.