Are women “opting out” of their careers or are they being forced out? Listen to Professor Bernie Jones' views on the subject in her NPR interview.

It’s no easy task to balance parenthood with work-life, especially for women who are trying to raise young children or start families. Suffolk Law Professor Bernie Jones explores this delicate struggle in her new book Women Who Opt Out: The Debate over Working Mothers and Work-Family Balance (NYU Press/ordering information). Jones served as editor for the book, which features essays from a collection of authors who specialize in either family or workplace-related research.

The book was born from a polarizing 2003 article in The New York Times Magazine by Lisa Belkin. Belkin argued that when educated women in the working world marry and have children, they leave their desks behind for motherhood. Jones was in her first year in the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst when she read the piece. It piqued her interest, as she had just finished a research fellowship on family law and feminist legal theory. Five years later, she organized a conference on the topic “Women and Work: Choices and Constraint,” and those who participated in the conference would later contribute the essays which comprise Women Who Opt Out.

Ultimately, the book contends that the majority of women who leave work-life and focus on raising their families are forced out by an environment which mistreats women and children and does not help those who wish to raise a family.

Professor Jones is also the author of Fathers of Conscience: Mixed Race Inheritance in the Antebellum South (University of Georgia, 2009).