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Women's Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Megan K. Stack (Author), Allyson Ryan (Narrator), Random House Audio (Publisher)
4.1 out of 5 stars 183 ratings
Editors' pick Best Biographies & Memoirs

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019

From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers

When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Delhi, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made?

Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility - and on the cost to the children who were left behind.

Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.

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  1. Listening Length
    12 hours and 27 minutes
  2. Author
    Megan K. Stack
  3. Narrator
    Allyson Ryan
  4. Audible release date
    April 2, 2019
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Random House Audio
  7. ASIN
    B07PF1B14D
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length 12 hours and 27 minutes
Author Megan K. Stack
Narrator Allyson Ryan
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date April 02, 2019
Publisher Random House Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B07PF1B14D
Best Sellers Rank

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
183 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and appreciate its insights into early motherhood. The writing style receives mixed reactions from customers.

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EnjoymentInsightAuthor style
6 customers mention "Enjoyment"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book enjoyable, with one mentioning it works well for women's book clubs.

"...looks at this question and so much more, in a highly personal and enjoyable way." Read more

"...Ultimately though, despite the unlikeability of the narrator, I enjoyed the book...." Read more

"...This would be a wonderful book for a women's book club...especially women who have nannies, maids, cleaning women, yard folks, etc...." Read more

"I really loved this book...." Read more

5 customers mention "Insight"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful, particularly regarding early motherhood, with one customer noting how it resonates with mothers in the US.

"...is how these stories set half way around the world, would resonate with mothers in the US...." Read more

"...guilt, frustrated ambition and boredom are tangible, and made the book an engaging read. I would recommend it." Read more

"I really loved this book. It gives a perspective on early motherhood and how challenging and conflicting it is for someone who is so passionate..." Read more

"...It's such a shame because clearly this is a topic worthy of attention...." Read more

9 customers mention "Author style"5 positive4 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the author's style, with some finding it poetic while others criticize it as self-absorbed.

"...It moved fast and painted a vivid picture of what her life was like in two rarefied global environments-- her guilt, frustrated ambition and boredom..." Read more

"...Stack's vulnerability brings this struggle to life. This book reads like a novel. I had a hard time putting it down...." Read more

"...I was prepared to dislike this book especially since the author is quite neurotic and tends to whine. However, I loved the book!..." Read more

"...At first, I found the author's writing to be inviting. I appreciated her honesty...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Rachel Watson
    5.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT another Mom Blog. A personal look at how working women cope to balance work and family.
    Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2019
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    As someone who lived and raised a family overseas for over a decade, the topic of this book immediately caught my attention. I grappled with my own choices about working in a challenging full-time career and being home to raise my children; as women around the world do everyday. Like Ms. Stack, I had the opportunity to take advantage of plentiful inexpensive domestic help thanks to my geographic location. I could personally relate to so much that Megan so bravely shares with her readers and I found myself whole heartedly agreeing with the trials she went through as a mom raising kids so far from your family.

    What I was more surprised about is how these stories set half way around the world, would resonate with mothers in the US. Even if it is not as common to have full time domestic help, American mothers also struggle with so many difficult choices that fathers never have to make. This book covers such a deeply personal yet universal situation that you do not even need to have children of your own to understand how society has to take a much deeper look at the importance of providing new parents a better way to balance work and home life. This looks at this question and so much more, in a highly personal and enjoyable way.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jason Friedman
    4.0 out of 5 stars This book is about Megan Stack, not poor women - but it's still a good read
    Reviewed in the United States on July 3, 2019
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    I admit that I went into this book with my hackles up, but wound up liking it quite a lot. Her description of childbirth, of her evocation of the sucking, sleepless vortex that follows it is the most realistic that I've read - in fact, I'm giving the book to a professional dad whose wife is expecting, so he can get a sense of what they're in for.

    But that is the where the "universality" of her experience ended. This is not at all a book about "women's work." This is a book about one extremely privileged, navel-gazing white woman who can afford to hire boundless domestic labor while she spends four (or five?) years working intermittently on a novelistic vanity project that -- she insists -- should be taken just as seriously as her husband's remunerated labor. But the novel is not successful, and she begins to imagine a sort of solidarity between herself and the impoverished women she hires: they are all them, after all, doing "women's work," and the burden of it is preventing all of them from doing what they really want to do. Her construction of herself as a partner in her servant's labors involves pages on pages of description about how tiring and nettlesome her domestic life is. (We are expected to forget how much more tiring her life would be if she were, say, living back in the US and doing her own housework.) It also involves casting her husband as the villain of the piece -- he's the disconnected dad who has the privilege of an interrupted professional life because all of these women are carrying his domestic load. The foundational conceit of the books is that, because Ms Stack was professionally disadvantaged by childrearing relative to her husband, she was somehow on the same spectrum as the brutalized women she hired. I was not convinced.

    I grew up abroad with nannies. But as an affluent career woman living in the US, I found little to identify with here. When I hired a nanny, it consumed most of my take-home pay and bought very little: no housework, no weekend help: just gap-year girls who spent most of their time watching tv. By the end of the book, it becomes hard to listen to this pampered creature's bellyaching. Her voyeurism and intrusiveness towards her employees is also, frankly, alarming: she stalks them on Facebook, she noses constantly and unwholesomely into their business... all in the name of her "journalistic" intentions and her desire to "empathize" with them. Golly: if they were American nannies, I'm sure they could have sued for harassment. She must have been a god-awful employer. Her household comes across as a reality show just waiting to happen.

    Ultimately though, despite the unlikeability of the narrator, I enjoyed the book. It moved fast and painted a vivid picture of what her life was like in two rarefied global environments-- her guilt, frustrated ambition and boredom are tangible, and made the book an engaging read. I would recommend it.
    12 people found this helpful
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  • Lyric
    5.0 out of 5 stars From one sister to another
    Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2019
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    As a lawyer in her mid-thirties who wants to soon start a family, I have thought about about the compromises that are folded into that choice. Megan Stack writes beautifully about the tension of buying the time of less privileged women so that the careers and households of the more privileged can thrive. It is a wrenching and fraught situation. Stack's vulnerability brings this struggle to life. This book reads like a novel. I had a hard time putting it down. A thank you to the author for sharing this part of her life.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Boomerbroadcast
    3.0 out of 5 stars Women's Work is not the definitive word on women's work
    Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2020
    Format: Hardcover
    After reading Women’s Work, A Reckoning With Work and Home by Megan K. Stack, I debated whether to even review it for BoomerBroadcast. If I don’t particularly enjoy a book, I usually don’t finish it, but the excellent writing compelled me to keep going, despite the fact I did not like the author or her message. I’ll review it anyway and if any of you read it, you might have a completely different take on it.
    First of all, the title is misleading. I thought I was embarking on an overview of the work/life balance faced by so many working women today. What I found was someone pretending to have the same challenges as other working mothers, but is so self-centred and narrow-minded that I struggled to sympathize with the perceived challenges of her life.
    Megan Stack is an American journalist who is experienced in reporting from war zones and foreign countries—kind of a new-age Murphy Brown. While working in China with her husband, who is also a journalist, she becomes pregnant and finds her adult-only, self-centred life turned upside down. With the easy availability of cheap domestic labour and trying to maintain her career as a writer, she decides to hire a Chinese nanny/housekeeper following the birth of her son. She naively imagines continuing her writing career while the ‘help’ takes care of domestic chores and babysitting.
    This is when Stack’s world implodes. After a difficult delivery, she’s physically drained and finds it challenging to cope with her new role. Her new baby is fussy and discontented. Despite having domestic help, she’s unable to rebuild the daily life she had envisioned—cuddling her new baby and being productive writing her novel while the baby sleeps. Domestic help comes with its own set of challenges. Does she trust the woman looking after her child? How much should she get involved in this woman’s personal problems? How much extra financial support should she dole out?
    Stack’s husband has the advantage of going out each morning to an office or on assignments that keep him out of the line of fire. This arrangement only serves to inflame Megan Stack’s resentment of her husband and exacerbates his hands-off behaviour. No one is happy with the new lifestyle.
    Then, when Stack is pregnant with their second child, her husband is transferred to Delhi, India. Domestic labour is even cheaper there and she hires two women to do the cooking, cleaning and childcare while she writes. Sounds simple enough but it’s not. Her domestic problems with her help have literally doubled. One lady travels across the city an a series of buses to work and the second one lives in quarters behind the main house. Stack still cannot cope and whines when her ladies want to take a Sunday off.
    Obviously, Megan Stack can write. She’s a journalist and her writing skill is what kept me reading even though I thoroughly disliked her and her husband. It’s impossible to forecast what any one of us would do in similar circumstances but the whole time she’s whining about her staff problems and her inability to keep her writing career on track, I found myself wondering what she would do if she had to face the same challenges so many less affluent new mothers are faced with.
    How can she complain when there are so many single mothers out there trying to simply put food on the table and pay the rent by working menial, low-income jobs, often without husbands much less the advantage of domestic help? What about abused women? Her lack of perspective left me frustrated and angry, even though she claims to be on the side of those ‘other women’.
    It’s not the fault of the author that the content is not what I expected. It was not an objective overview of the unbalanced gender-based distribution of domestic work to women. It was the experience of one woman delegating domestic work to her own employees in her own home. Since the beginning of time, women have been victims of our biology. We’re the ones who have the babies and are expected to shoulder a disproportionate amount of time for childcare and homemaking. Because of this, we will never have the same freedom from domestic drudgery that men enjoy.
    When the novel she was working on wasn’t picked up by a publisher, Stack resorted to the handiest bit of research and experience she could access. She used the three women who had been in her employ to create Women’s Work, a case study of working women but it’s not of our larger world. I did empathize with these women, and their stories, which unfolded at the end of the book, made it worthwhile finishing.
    So many women and mothers face unimaginable struggles every single day of their lives. How could the author imagine her life even compares? Stack’s personal story was annoying and frustrating, but the stories of her three domestic helpers were definitely worth the read. The quality of the writing is definitely 9 out 10 but the author’s ability to get me on side with her personal story was much, much lower. I’d be curious to know if you agree or disagree with me.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Giulia
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
    Reviewed in Italy on January 15, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    A very good book
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  • Sam
    5.0 out of 5 stars Speechless..this book is phenomenal
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    I grew up as one of Megan's children in Latin America. I felt I was opening a window to my mother's life reading this book. I can't recommend it enough. If I could give it ten stars I would. Read it now!!
    One person found this helpful
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  • jacqueline sarah bushnell
    5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Beautifully written and poignant. An exploration of uncomfortable truths conducted with compassion and humility. Thank you Megan for your insight.
    One person found this helpful
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