“We Need a Major Redesign of Life”
“It seems to me that besides facing procreation, women’s ability to be happy as parents has been attacked by our capitalist system that makes sure they have no good choices unless they are rich. Fortunately, plenty of people are calling for change with women leading the charge. In “We Need a Major Redesign of Life” (Washington Post, November 30, 2019), Laura L. Carstensen, a professor of psychology and the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, calls for the sort of sweeping changes we need. She writes: ‘It’s time to get serious about a major redesign of life. Thirty years were added to average life expectancy in the twentieth century, and rather than imagine the scores of ways we could use these years to improve quality of life, we tacked them all on at the end. Only old age got longer. . . . [So] it would be a mistake to replace the old rigid model of life—education first, then family and work, and finally retirement—with a new model just as rigid. Instead, there should be many different routes, interweaving leisure, work, education and family throughout life, taking people from birth to death with places to stop, rest, change courses and repeat steps along the way. Old age alone wouldn’t last longer; rather, youth and middle age would expand.’ Work-related complaints are multiplying. Here’s one: “Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy’” (New York Times, April 26, 2019). It explores the pitfalls confronting even some of the most “successful” of us. “The returns to working long, inflexible hours have greatly increased. This is particularly true in managerial jobs and what social scientists call the greedy professions, like finance, law and consulting—an unintentional side effect of the nation’s embrace of a winner-take-all economy.”
A pre-order purchase of the paperback right now really will help the book far more than buying it later. And if you decide to give away copies of my book as gifts to family and friends or to those you work with - say to everyone you know :) - please pre-order those extra copies today. This is when you can really help out most. In today's nutty book world pre-orders are "where it's at."
Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy
is Available for Pre-Order Now.
To be published November 2 by HCI Books • Distributed by Simon & Schuster
