“She is a little too fat, but she has a beautiful face and a divine voice.”

He’s since apologized, but talk about a backhanded compliment. Still, It doesn’t come as a surprise in a world where women are judged first and foremost not by their talent, their intelligence or their contributions to society — but by their looks.

Read the rest of this article and my other posts on the Huffington Post.

A new study by Katrina Leupp, a University of Washington sociology graduate student, has found that stay-at-home moms have more depression symptoms than their working counterparts. But among working moms, she found that those with a “supermom” attitude—who as young adults consistently agreed that women could easily combine work and family responsibilities—were at a higher risk for depression than those who thought that it would be more challenging.

“Employed women who expected that work-life balance was going to be hard are probably more likely to accept that they can’t do it all,” Leupp said. These moms may be more comfortable making tradeoffs, such as leaving work early to pick up kids, not taking on certain work projects or being less involved in school activities. But women who expected that being a working parent would be a breeze were more likely to feel like they were failing if they didn’t live up to that ideal.

Leupp analyzed survey responses from a national sample of 1,600 married mothers. The women were participants in a Labor Department longitudinal study, and as young women, they had previously answered work-life balance questions measuring whether they agreed with such statements as “Working wives lead to more juvenile delinquency” and “A woman is happiest if she can stay at home with her children.” When the women reached age 40, Leupp measured their levels of depression.

Read more about the study here. Watch Fox News Tampa Bay discuss TORN (9/6/2011).

Watch the segment here.

The esteemed panel of judges responsible for choosing TORN included: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of PBS’s Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times best-selling author; Priscilla Dunstan, creator of the Dunstan Baby Language; Patricia Rossi, host of NBC’s Manners Minute; Dr. Letitia S. Wright, D.C., host of the Wright Place™ TV Show; and Catherine Witcher, M.Ed., special needs expert and founder of Precision Education, Inc.

Thank you, Lisa, for taking over where Oprah left off with your new “Lisa’s List” of books to read.

Here are the NY Times Motherlode Book Club discussions about TORN:

• Introducing the Motherlode Book Club (6/7/2011)
• Should Women Be Doctors? (6/13/2011)
• Are Moms and Dads Interchangeable? (6/20/2011)
• Talking about TORN (6/21/2011)
• Preparing to be TORN (6/24/2011)
• TORN Around the World (6/28/2011)
• The Doubts of a Stay-at-Home Dad (6/29/2011)
• Do GenX Women Choose Work Over Kids? (6/30/2011)

The women surveyed, who ranged in age between 33 and 46 years old, were born during the height of the feminist movement. They grew to consider motherhood an obstacle to having a successful career. So they’ve put off having children — or avoided it entirely.

The strategy seems to be working, at least from a professional/career standpoint: 19 percent of those who participated in the study said they earn more than their husbands or partners, and 74 percent characterized themselves as ambitious. Though a number of women aren’t interested in having children, many do want to be moms but just find it too hard to balance raising kids with work. And many are afraid that once they get pregnant, their jobs will be affected.

Lead author Lauren Leader-Chivee studied 3,000 female and male college graduates in the U.S. and also looked at their counterparts in Britain. “We have found very similar trends in both countries,” she said.

Deborah Fryer, a 44-year-old documentary film maker and contributor to my book, TORN, has followed a path similar to the women surveyed and agrees with the findings.

“When I was in my twenties, I was only focused on finishing my PhD.  In my thirties, I dated a lot, but my true love was my new career as a documentary filmmaker, which took me all over the world,” says Fryer. “I thought I had all the time in the world.  I met my husband when I was 42.  I finally feel ready to have children now, but it’s just not that easy any more.  Some days I feel incredibly sad about it, and other days I feel incredibly free.”

Deborah’s story in TORN, “Birth Mark,” examines the decisions she has made regarding career and motherhood and the consequences of those decisions. Although TORN focuses primarily on the motherhood-career juggle, I felt it was important to highlight the stories of a few women who have made the choice NOT to have children because they can’t see a way to combine motherhood and career.

Which leads me to my question: Why is it that women still feel forced to choose between kids and career– today, in 2011?

In many interviews, I’ve referred to TORN as a “call to action” for us, as a society, to stop discussing the issue of work-life balance as a “woman’s issue.” Men and women need to join forces to put the necessary support mechanisms in place to allow all workers—men and women, fathers and mothers– to balance both work and home life. Childcare goes to the root of this whole debate – we can have all the economic stimuli and welfare reform packages you like, but unless there’s the infrastructure and sufficient childcare in place, we may as well be whistling in the wind.

** Watch my interview with Lisa Belkin of the New York Times (6/14/2011).

Last time I looked, there were 86 reader comments on the announcement, most by excited readers who now have a new outlet for “gathering” with an online community to discuss important books on parenting. The concept of an online book club is brilliant, in my view. How many times I wish I could join my girlfriends for an evening “book club” night out, but can’t because life gets in the way. Now I can share my thoughts online, on my own time, with a wonderful group of readers from around the country.

Thank you, Lisa, for making the Motherlode Book Club a reality. Now we don’t even need Oprah’s Book Club. We have Lisa’s List. Hoorah!

Here is a snippet from the announcement Lisa made, with a short “review” of TORN:

“[TORN] is filled with the voices of women trying to solve an impossible equation, all doing the best they can. These nearly four dozen writers include a wide swath of the real world — attorneys and professors, software designers and social workers, soldiers and stay-at-home moms. They live on good incomes, and reduced incomes, and, in one case, on welfare. They are married, divorced and single. They are, as a group, far more educated than average, but so, too, I have learned, are Motherlode readers. They write about big things (cancer, depression, regrets, teen pregnancy, readjusting to being a mom after being a soldier in Iraq) and small (worm bins, cupcakes, speeding tickets, Dora the Explorer, dirty diapers.)

All of them have one thing in common — they have all compromised. Whether theirs is a compromise they can live with is the central question.”

So buy TORN, read it, and join us for a lively discussion online at the NY Times.

Read the NY Times Motherlode Book Club discussions about TORN:

• Introducing the Motherlode Book Club (6/7/2011)
• Talking about TORN (6/21/2011)
• Preparing to be TORN (6/24/2011)
• TORN around the world (6/28/2011)
• The Doubts of a Stay-at-Home Dad (6/29/2011)
• Do GenX Women Choose Work Over Kids? (6/30/2011)

TORN highlights the experiences of a variety of mothers today who are trying their best to harmonize family life and employment in a world where a balance struck either way is risky. The stories in TORN include those of:

• a military mother spending a year tour of duty in Iraq, apart from her two little girls;
• a former high-school drop out and welfare mother who put herself through college to become a professional woman, but still shops for her family’s meals at a food bank;
• a documentary filmmaker who put career before motherhood and is now struggling with infertility;
• a woman who chose to put her medical career aside to pursue the job of stay-at-home motherhood;

… and many, many more. Yes, there are some women who have studied and worked hard to become professionals– bankers, lawyers, doctors and teachers. But the majority of women in the book are far from “wealthy” and, in my view, far from “whiny.” Honest and raw, yes. Whiny, no.

Motherhood is the real subject of TORN; more specifically, how women today are trying to be the best mothers possible in light of the many other demands being placed upon them—work being one.  While a majority of the women in the book NEED to work to help support their families, others have chosen the noble, and challenging, path of stay-at-home motherhood. And many celebrate this choice — stating outright that there is no more important job in the world than being a mother.

One of the key messages of TORN is that there isn’t a right or wrong way to “do” motherhood. As women, we have far more to gain by joining forces to help one another than by falling into the trap of judgment and dismissal.