LIVE from NYPL: Leslie BENNETTS & Elissa SCHAPPELL debate: The Feminine Mistake April 10, 2007

New York Public Library LIVE presents
Leslie Bennetts: The Feminine Mistake
a Debate
Tuesday, April 10, 2007

General Admission $15.00
Students with ID $10.00
Seniors 65 or over $10.00

Length: 1 hr 30 mins
Intermission: None
Seating: General Admission
You choose your seats when you get to the theater.

LESLIE BENNETTS & ELISSA SCHAPPELL debate "The Feminine Mistake"

Elissa Schappell will take on Leslie Bennetts’ provocative assertion that women cannot afford to quit their day jobs to be stay-at-home moms. When women agonize about balancing work and family, many “solve” the problem by abandoning their careers. But as Leslie Bennetts demonstrates in her new book, The Feminine Mistake, it’s dangerous to depend on anyone else to support you, and most full-time mothers will ultimately find their economic security challenged by divorce, a husband’s unemployment, his illness or even death. And yet few think about such risks—or about the surprising benefits of work. Despite the stress of the juggling act, working mothers are actually happier and even healthier than full-time homemakers. The Feminine Mistake documents both the bad news and the good news with an inspiring new spin on a hot-button topic.

About Leslie Bennetts

Leslie Bennetts has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 1988. Her 2005 cover story on Jennifer Aniston was the best-selling issue in the magazine’s history, and the People magazine cover story about Bennetts’ interview with Aniston was the best-selling issue in the history of People. Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Bennetts spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter. She began covering so-called “women’s issues” at The Philadelphia Bulletin in the early 1970’s, and has continued to write about women, marriage, families and parenting ever since. After five years at The Bulletin, where she won many awards for writing and reporting, Bennetts spent ten years as a reporter at The New York Times, where she started as a writer for the Style page and went on to cover national politics, metropolitan news, City Hall, and cultural news. She was the first woman ever to cover a presidential campaign for The Times.

About Elissa Schappell

Elissa Schappell is the author of USE ME and co-editor with Jenny Offill of the anthologies, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. She is a co-founder and editor-at-large of Tin House, and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

*These annual lectures made possible by an endowed fund established by the friends and associates of the late Richard B. Salomon.

Official Website: http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/pep/pepdesc.cfm?id=2750