I believe that this book should be required reading for anyone who is concerned about the debilitating trends in our society: students shooting their classmates, breakdowns in family relationships, high divorce rates, and out-of-wedlock childbirths. The author presents significant evidence to show that these may all be symptomatic of adult America's obsession with work outside of the home, and subsequently leaving young America to try and invent its own culture and morality.Recent studies have shown that today's youth suffer from a far higher rate of mental illness than those who grew up just a couple of generations ago. Social disconnectedness and a sense of impending doom have driven many of our youth toward immediate gratification and away from a long-term interest in education and work. At the same time, technological change and the knowledge explosion makes a successful vocation even harder to attain. This is especially true among young men, whose participation rates in postsecondary education, in the electoral process, and in civic activities are at an all-time low and declining rapidly.Although Robertson's book is deep and well documented, it is very readable. He is at his best in the chapter where he discusses the contrast between the work of a full-time mother with that of a "career woman." Homemaking, which was considered the ideal by feminists as recently as the middle of the twentieth century, is now looked upon as demeaning and destructive of self-esteem, while a "career" outside of the home is viewed as something highly desirable and worthy of achievement. "The work of raising children requires constant hidden sacrifice, unacknowledged and unrewarded by society, often unacknowledged and unrewarded by one's own family-particularly the children themselves. ... A society that measures success exclusively in terms of material or professional attainment is unlikely to accord much status to the hidden work of the mother in the home."Especially upsetting to those who believe that the traditional family is the foundation of civil society is the palette of economic incentives that government and business offer to the mother who chooses to select "professional" childcare. Childcare credits, tax-exempt childcare flexible spending accounts, and higher IRA savings limits abound for the two-earner family, while the mother who elects to raise her own children receives no benefits in exchange for sacrificing a dual income and striving to make ends meet on a single income.Robertson offers criticism for Republicans and Democrats alike. Neither major political party has found a way to support the concept of the traditional family, despite their continual touting of "family values" and "family-friendly legislation" that further drives wedges between mothers and their children. Instead of discouraging divorce and/or out-of-wedlock childbearing, welfare policies have forced mothers to accept out-of-the-home childcare so that they can go to work full time."There's No Place Like Work" offers a well documented examination of current destructive trends in family and workplace dynamics. It is certain to stimulate provocative discussion, and I hope it will receive the wide readership it deserves.