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A Balancing Act: Leslie Bennetts, Author of The Feminine Mistake - Part II

As a wife to Jeremy, and mother to Emily, 18, and Nick 15, Leslie Bennetts knows firsthand the challenges of being a working mom. In her new book, "The Feminine Mistake" released last week, Bennetts makes a case for why women should not leave their careers behind. In the process she has unwittingly ignited a hotbed of debate about the merits of staying home versus being a working mom.

Part one of my interview sparked much debate on our own message boards. In this continuation of my interview, Leslie discusses the controversy and uproar from stay-at-home moms.

Samantha: I have a friend who has a baby and a successful business career and she says that if her husband were making enough money she would quit tomorrow. What would you encourage her to think about before making that decision?

Leslie: Women often think about this decision as if they can count on the husband's income over the long run. If you add up all the risk factors it becomes unavoidably clear that the majority of these women are going to end up on the wrong side of the odds. Half of them are going to get divorced and in addition to that some of them will have husbands who become sick or disabled or who die prematurely and a lot of them are going to have husbands who lose their jobs at some point or another. Women are living longer and longer these days so these women who are leaving the workforce have to say if something happened to my husband even through no fault of his own do you have enough resources to support you and your children until you are 95? Almost nobody has that kind of money. Women are already in poverty at twice the rate of men in their later years. 4 out of 5 of the women who are poor were not poor when they had husbands around.

Leslie: It is a lot of pressure to put on men to expect them to be the single source of income for a family and many men feel very resentful. They may not tell their wives about it but it feels like a very overwhelming responsibility to them to know that they are all that stands between their families and disaster. Because it is a very uncertain world out there and if you stick your head in the sand and deny that challenges might arise it is not going to help you to deal with them when they come.

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