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  • Published: 1 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446468180
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

Shattered

Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality




If we live in an age of equality, why are women are still left holding the baby? A revolutionary new manifesto for achieving a new equality of the sexes in family life.

If we live in an age of equality, why are women are still left holding the baby?

A revolutionary manifesto for achieving a new equality of the sexes in family life.


Today, women outperform men at school and university. They make a success of their early careers and enter into relationships on their own terms. But once they have children, their illusions of equality are swiftly shattered as the time machine of motherhood transports them back to the 1950s.


Entertaining and controversial, Shattered exposes the inequalities that still exist between women and men - at work, at home and within relationships - and sets out a bold manifesto for a more fulfilling family life.

'Powerful' Daily Telegraph
'Gripping' Mail on Sunday
'Invigorating' Guardian

  • Published: 1 May 2011
  • ISBN: 9781446468180
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 272

About the author

Rebecca Asher

Rebecca Asher has worked in television news and current affairs and as the Deputy Editor of Womans Hour and an Executive Producer at BBC Radio 4. Her first book was Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality. Her experiences as a mother of both a boy and a girl inspired her to write this book.

Also by Rebecca Asher

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Praise for Shattered

A brilliant and refreshingly honest contribution to the debate on how we raise our children... Asher writes in a way that skilfully pursues a compelling argument and thoughtful solutions in an accessible manner. As such, the book deserves a wide audience

Professor Tanya Byron

A furious, but immensely articulate, puncturing of the myth that the nirvana of parental equality has been achieved... An intelligent, thoroughly researched and highly readable contribution to a debate that urgently needs to be aired in the corridors of power, as well as through gritted teeth over snatched cups of bitter coffee in baby and toddler groups

Susan Flockhart, Sunday Herald

Asher is an elegant writer and a lucid thinker... This is a polemical book, stuffed full of research and case studies; yet it is gripping enough to read through the night. It left me fired up with reformist zeal

Jemima Lewis, Mail on Sunday

Asher wants a revolution, and her conviction is invigorating... This book should be read by parents and policymakers alike

Rachel Seiffert, Guardian

Excellent and readable book

The Economist

Her writing on motherhood belongs to the brisk, outward-looking, pamphleteering tradition of Mary Wollstonecraft. Asher does not interrogate herself; she interrogates the world

New Statesman

I was utterly gripped. This is powerful stuff. Rebecca Asher's take of the culture of parenting is radical, original and refreshingly spirited, a heartfelt call for change

Viv Groskop, Daily Telegraph

Should be required reading for policy makers and new parents alike... This is the academic counterpart to the roller coaster of emotional experience that forms the basis for books such as Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work

Rebecca Taylor, Time Out

This insightful, thrillingly honest, well-argued and often very funny book should be required reading for all thinking parents and prospective parents... Nothing is as useful as a book that is both heartfelt and intellectually rigorous, and no subject is as important as the way we raise our children. What Asher has achieved here is superb

Chris Cleave