Social welfare scholar Neil Gilbert picks up on media debates in the popular press surrounding a dilemma that many women face: “how much of their labor to invest in the work of motherhood and how much in paid employment” (p. 3). The heart of the problem, Gilbert argues, is that motherhood and domestic life for women are systematically devalued by capitalism, feminism, and public policy. The answer he provides is to revalue motherhood. Practically, this means implementing policies that support not only simultaneous child rearing and labor force participation (like day care) but also sequential participation (like long-term parental leave).

A Mother's Work is organized quite clearly. Chapter 1 looks at the trends—the increasing news attention to the “opt-out revolution” (where women are choosing not work) and the long-term trends of decreasing fertility. Chapter 2 lays out a typology of work-family lifestyles (traditional, neotraditional, modern, postmodern) to distinguish different ideologies and beliefs that women hold about work and family. The heart of the empirical chapters (3–5) addresses his primary assertions that “the culture of capitalism undervalues the economic worth of … domestic activities,” “prevailing feminist expectations overestimate the social and emotional benefits of labor-force participation,” and “family friendly policies of the welfare state create incentives that reinforce the norms and values of capitalism and feminism”(p. 4).

Taking on any one of these three issues could be a book in and of itself, and thus a single chapter devoted to each offers only an overview. Chapter 3 examines capitalism and the “cost-benefit mind-set” that leads “us to conclude that the benefits of motherhood are consistently undervalued by the prevalent sensibilities and habits of mind attuned to the opportunities in modern capitalist societies” (p. 85). Chapter 4 looks at feminism, making the case that the rise in two-earner families is due to increased consumption, rather than economic necessity for basic goods and services. The benefits from work that feminists advocate are likely experienced by those in academia who receive a lot of joy from their occupations but nonetheless “do not have ‘real’ jobs” (p. 103). Chapter 5 examines public policy, in particular day care and European family policy. Gilbert suggests that more family-friendly policies in the United States would encourage those mothers in the middle of the typology (neotraditional and modern) to invest more in home life.

There is no question that this is a provocative book designed to make readers (not just academics) think about the roots of our cultural conundrum whereby women feel squeezed between successful careers and being “good mothers.” Its major contribution is an argument rather than new empirical research. As such, it does not contain a discussion of research design, original data collection, or in-text tables and figures. Its tone is friendly and familiar. But these attributes are also some of its greatest weaknesses.

As a piece useful to political scientists, its focus on accessibility over empirical evidence is problematic. The central dilemma the book addresses is the recent dip in women's labor force participation and long-term decreasing fertility. But the book relies on secondary sources and does not present the data longitudinally and graphically—which is crucial to a story about demographic change over time. Is the dip real? We never really find out and we cannot evaluate the seriousness of the claim without seeing how trends have changed over time. With a few exceptions, there is a lack of control groups. We hear about trends but cannot tell for whom those trends ring true. How have the trends addressed affected married versus unmarried women? How have men's labor force participation rates changed over the same period of time? Such questions are not answered.

Further, it is surprising to see so much written on women's role as caretakers without any attention to the work of political scientists like Joan Tronto or Nel Noddings or those who write on family, such as Julie Novkov, Kathleen Sullivan, Theda Skocpol, or economist Nancy Folbre.

In addition, the book's folksy tone relies on assertions that do not always ring true and sometimes seem blatantly wrong, such as “Today, women continue to reach for their purse, but if a man readily accepts a woman's offer to pay, that's probably their last dinner together” (p. 20). Or “some men certainly might enter this work [child care] and do it as well as, if not better than, some women. But honestly, how many readers would be comfortable dropping off their three-year-old daughter in a day-care center staffed by three forty-year-old men whose marketable skills did not commend them to more gainful activities?” (p. 174).

Ultimately, the most serious problem is the book's assumption that child rearing really is a mother's work—not a father's work, not a family's work, much less the work of a village. Pervading the entire volume is a notion of middle-class nuclear two-parent households where women ought to stay home with their children. Important empirical facts are tucked in parenthetical statements. So Gilbert writes that the “decline in family size and the shift in women's labor … was a sweeping social change that cannot be ascribed to the press of economic necessity” (p. 96) and then continues: “(This general assessment should not be taken as a denial that there are still many women in dire need, particularly single mothers who must work)” (p. 96). Or, later he notes that while men have taken an increased role in child rearing, “much more remains to be done … for mothers who must work out of genuine necessity, who wish to pursue paid careers, or who are already the primary earner in their family,” followed by a significant fact in parentheses, “(about one-third of all working wives earned more than their husbands in 2004)” (p. 164).

Overall, Gilbert ought to be commended for taking on a timely topic, and one that affects families and employers. Thinking about how policy shapes individuals' lives is a productive line of inquiry. However, his point could also be made by incorporating more original data and by including discussion of more research that has examined the topic. A Mother's Work is a provocative piece that may incite a reaction, but it is also guaranteed not to bore.