Selling ourselves short : why we struggle to earn a living and have a life / Catherine M. Wallace.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wallace, Catherine Miles.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian life--Catholic authors.

Christian life.

Working mothers--Religious life--United States.

Working mothers.

Working mothers--Religious life.

United States.

Physical Description:

318 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Grand Rapids, Mich. : Brazos Press, [2003]

Summary:

The guilt and exhaustion that plague our lives are all too familiar. How can we balance work, parenting, relationships, and personal fulfillment while laboring under the cultural mandate to compete and consume? How can we become truly successful human beings when the marketplace recipe for success disregards what it means to be human? Catherine M. Wallace argues that the root of the problem is that "competition, rather than compassion, is the public norm of adult behavior." While many books on this topic turn only to hoped-for but remote policy changes for an answer, Wallace proposes a more immediate, and in many ways a far more radical, solution. Drawing on the ancient traditions of spiritual discernment, she challenges us to embrace moral responsibility and compassion. We can finally trade nagging guilt for the freedom of living in good conscience.

Contents:

Part 1 What Does It Profit? Wanting More from Life Than a Paycheck

Autobiographical Prelude: Of Kids, Careers, and Craziness

1. How Competition Has Replaced Compassion in American Culture 15

The Tinker Man's Endeavor

Who Cares?

The Power of What's Missing

2. Compassion, Altruism, and the Common Good 27

Religious Accounts of Compassion

The Altruist and the Rational Actor

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Common Good

Part 2 The Angel and the Oaf: How the Self Divided against Itself and Everybody Lost

3. How Did We Get into This Mess? 47

The Spiritual Grammnar of the West

Virtue and the Good Life

Surviving in a World "Grazed Thin by Death"

4. Can We Blame the Victorians? 59

The Challenge of Industrial Capitalism

The Changing Vocabulary of Virtue

The Rise of Victorian "Separate Spheres"

5. Why Gender Dualism Leaves Us All Half-Crazy 69

Distortions and Deteriorations of Gender Identity

Gender Metaphors and the Loss of Compassion

Gender Metaphor and Contemporary Motherhood Polemics

Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Humanity

Part 3 Home Sweet Home: How "Family Values" Fail Us

6. Making It Official: Why Morality and Compassion Don't Belong in Public 85

Family Values and the "Public" World

Where the Golden Rule Has Gone

and Why

How "Family Values" Undermine the Common Good

A Plague of Experts

Discounting Ourselves

7. What Counts Is What Counts

and Nothing Else Does 97

The Rise of Quantification

Double-Entry Bookkeeping: The Either/Or Cosmology of Spreadsheets

8. Home Sweet Home as Sacred Center 107

The Mythic Resonance of "Home"

The Architectural Iconography of "Home"

The Mythic Locus and the Shopping Mall

9. Having a Soul That's Not for Sale 117

Has Meaning Any Meaning?

The Divided Self

The Triumph of the Therapeutic

Conclusion: Caring in Public

Part 4 Secular Salvation and the Divine Right of Markets: He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins

10. What's Work? 131

Having a Life and Finding "Flow"

"Something More" than Work

11. The History of Our Dilemma 145

Downsizing and Damnation

Predestination: How Do I Know If I'm "Saved"?

Success as Salvation

My Job, My Self

What If Work Does Not Define Us?

12. Selling Ourselves Short in a Buyer's Market 161

Consumerism and Self-Definition

Marketplace Realities and the Time Bind

The "Divine Right" of Markets

Conscience and the Divided Self

Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Lives

Part 5 Decoding the Child-Care Debates

13. The Predicament of Parents 179

The Data on Child Care

14. Parents in the Cross Fire: Disputes among Academics 189

The Behaviorists

The Attachment Theorists

Sorting Out the Issues: New York in Neuroscience

The Social Skills of Newborns

The Battle among Biologists: Genetic Determinism

Reclaiming the Question: The Concept of Memory

Reclaiming the Question: The Reality of "Self"

Conclusion: Compassion and Parenthood

Part 6 Survival and Integrity: Defining Our Choices, Living Our Lives

15. The Question of Conscience 219

Deconstructing Conscience

Moral Norms and the Deliberate Life

The Moral Autonomy of Conscience: A Christian Account

Conscience, Faith, and Imagination

16. The Arts of Moral Discernment 237

Ignatian Discernment: An Overview

Neuroscience and Discernment

The Core of a Decision: Consolation and Desolation

The Rational Actor and the Religious Believer

Conclusion: To Seek the Discerning Heart 255.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-318).

ISBN:

1587430797

OCLC:

52559038