Pleased to announce that our imprint, Cambridge Common Press, has launched a new edition of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity . The release is timed to Women’s History Month (March, 2014).

Broken Patterns,  by award-winning journalist Anita M. Harris (that would be me)  traces the experiences of 40 American professional women who entered male-dominated careers in the 1970s and 1980s. Placing these groundbreaking women in generational context along with their mothers and grandmothers, the book outlines a “push-pull” pattern of historical development going back to the Colonial period in America.

The new (2nd) edition adds stories of present day college students and recent graduates, a new preface and an afterword assessing how far women have come since Broken Patterns was originally published, in 1995.

In the 19th century and again in the 20th,  Harris writes, the more women left the home for paying work in one generation, the  deeper the societal belief in domesticity for women in the next.

A “push-pull” pattern first became apparent when,  to Harris’ surprise, women told her they chose their careers because they didn’t want to emulate their mothers, who were homemakers in the 1950s–but described grandmothers who had worked outside the home in the early 1900s.

In light of the struggles of today’s working women to balance careers and families, Harris asks, what does such a push-pull dynamic portend for the future?

Unlike several new books arguing that women’s quest for equality has stalled, Harris takes a hopeful view, suggesting that “progress is not linear, nor cyclic, but spiral.”  As individuals and as a society,  she writes, “we  push forward toward a goal, reach an impasse, pull back  to retrieve and reintegrate aspects and values of the past, building new frameworks in which to move forward, once again.”

The book will be of interest to all working women because it shows how their life decisions may be influenced—consciously or unconsciously—by mothers’ and grandmothers’ lives.

NPR Reporter and author Margot Adler calls the book  “A splendid study of professional women.”

Broken Patterns Second Edition  [ISBN 978061590615907062] is available from Amazon.com, Kindle.com, and  the Broken Patterns E-store.   It will soon be available at the Harvard Bookstore, in Cambridge, MA.

For more information, please visit the Broken Patterns Website at http://brokenpatternsbook.com, or http://Cambridgecommonpress.com.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.

Executive Producer Bryan Kane, Producer Brett Greene, Writer/Director Brandon Harris

Joined friends, family and other enthusiastic audience members on Saturday night, June 29,  for  the Boston premier of  feature film “Redlegs”  at the Roxbury Film Festival, at the Massachusetts College of Art.

I liked the film–which was written and directed by Brandon Harris (and executive produced by Brett Green –who happens to be my cousin). It’s about three 20-somethings trying to deal with their grief after a  childhood friend  is killed,  in  Cincinnati.

The film begins at the friend’s funeral and slowly unfolds– revealing the friends’ relationships with one another and with the victim, and where they are now, in their lives.

The  friends’ actions and reactions sometimes seem inexplicable–   irrational anger at one another; attempts to stay busy by playing frisby and attending sporting events;  beating up a guy who challenges them; incessant use of the “F-word.” But it  works because the point of the film is that they don’t know what to do or how to act–and,taken as a whole,    it all expresses the chaos of grief.

I found it especially interesting to see how a 20-something director portrayed the interactions of males his own age struggling to  define themselves and one another as men.

Congrats, guys!

Here’s the  favorable New York Times Review:  http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/movies/redlegs-by-brandon-harris-is-a-cincinnati-tale.html?_r=0 .

—Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a public relations and digital marketing firm located in Cambridge, MA.

Much appreciated Katie Johnson’s insightful May 27 Boston Globe article “Many Women With Top Degrees Stay Home.” It’s about a Vanderbilt University study showing that married women with degrees from the most elite colleges and universities are likelier to opt out of professional careers than are women who attended the least selective schools–and that this differential has little to do with family income.

One analyst suggests that women with degrees from elite schools feel freer than others to opt out because they think their prestigious degrees will allow them to easily transition back into the workforce.

Mebbe so–although this implies that, given the choice, all women would rather leave their jobs to stay at home with children–which I don’t for two seconds believe is true.
Based on my research for Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, I’ll bet the explanation for opting out is a lot more complicated than that.

In my interviews, many women told me they chose male-dominated professions because they didn’t want to live the sorts of lives their homemaker mothers led–but many had grandmothers who worked outside the home in the early 20th century. This–and the historical record– led me to posit a push=pull process in which, going back to the industrial revolution in the US, the more women left the home for paying work in one generation, the greater the pull to domesticity, in the next. That push-pull process–driven by social, technological, generational and psychological forces–is also reflected in women’s personal development along their life cycles. I believe it helps account for some of the choices–such as schools, spouses, and careers– that women make.

I’m not saying Johnson and her interviewees are wrong…Only that that women make life choices for a multitude of reasons. The Vanderbilt study points out that women who graduate from elite schools tend to marry men from similar schools. It strikes me that if both spouses pursue highly competitive careers that allow little time for family life, something’s got to give when children come along. Most often, it’s the woman.

Like Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook COO and author of Lean-In, I am troubled by the conundrum this creates: talented women who opt out of careers, even for just a few years, may lose the opportunity to attain positions in which they can influence workplace culture–and enhance the lives of women and men of the future. On the other hand, perhaps it is not the privileged who are likeliest to push for equality–but, rather, those who have struggled to overcome barriers.
–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Wayne State University Press, 1995), A new edition will soon be published; please comment below if you’d like to reserve a copy.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and digital marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Harvard Square Stacation

Spending Memorial Day Weekend at home, in and near Harvard Square. Good start yesterday: Breakfast at Henrietta’s, lunch at Mexican, afternoon perusing books on Web design. More later!

–Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a public relations and digital marketing firm located in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA.