Because of the hype surrounding Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, I recently picked up a copy.

But I wouldn’t suggest you do the same.

Lean In in a nutshell

In a nutshell, Lean In seeks to prove that a problematic leadership gap exists between men and women in the corporate world.  As a result, Sandberg believes women must work to close this gap because: “Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.”

Sandberg’s premise (however untested) leads her to the following conclusion: it is the responsibility of all women to “bring down barriers that prevent more women from getting to the top.”

In short, if you’re a woman and you choose to stay at home, you’re not being a good member of Team Woman.

Based on her conclusion that more women should enter corporate America for the good of all women, Sandberg writes that women who choose to ‘opt-out’ of the workforce are:

• contributing to leadership barriers in the public sphere
• not “leaning in” to personal growth
• lowering “expectations of what they can achieve”
• not “demonstrating courage to reach for more opportunities, sit at more tables, and believe more in themselves.”

Leaving Lean In on the Bookshelf

Besides the fact that the book reads like a liberal textbook for gender studies, here’s my primary beef with Lean In. Sandberg’s conclusion implies (intentionally or not) that working inside the home isn’t as important or valuable as working outside the home.

Whatever popular culture says, Scripture places a high calling on homemaking. In fact, it positions this role as both a ministry and sacrifice – not to mention a vigorous challenge – that reaps eternal rewards.

And while I’m not against women working outside the home, I‘d like to counter some of Sandberg’s implied assumptions about the role of a homemaker and the women who choose it:

• Homemaking is an unambitious choice.

I have both long-term and short-term goals for my family. And just because my goals are family-based and not strictly personal, I hope I wouldn’t be characterized as unambitious.

Ambition is not the problem. Filtering strategic goals through the Word of God ensures they do not become idols of the heart – a process with which I deal daily.

Furthermore, the choice to be a homemaker doesn’t reveal a lack of ambition so much as it represents a sacrifice of setting aside personal ambitions for a time.

I love to write. But with little ones around my knees (okay, my waist, actually) my time is not always my own. I can’t count the number of times I’ve settled down to write an article for the TEXAN or tried to interview a source when two little monkeys start climbing my back.

I recognize that this will not always be the case. During a recent conversation with my mother, she told me: “You have the rest of your life to write. You only have your children for a short time.” Yes! I need to hear this everyday!

• Homemaking doesn’t require a voice.

Mothers who spend each day with their children are often the single-greatest influence on their families. On the surface, I suspect that Sandberg wouldn’t object to the importance of a mother’s influence. But her assumption that women will only gain a voice when they lean into a career is revealing.

The idea that homemaking doesn’t require a voice is rooted in a greater and more problematic issue – that those who are in the home don’t need a voice to represent them. We will never value a woman’s choice to stay at home when we don’t place any significant value on children.

• Homemaking doesn’t require higher education.

This thought has been in the forefront of my mind after reading about the recent outcry against highly-educated women who stay at home.  And while Sandberg doesn’t explicitly state homemakers don’t need a higher education in her book, the feminist rhetoric of which Sandberg is a part equates women who stay at home with wasting their master’s degree.

My response is this: those women must not have had very creative mothers!

My own mother used her degree in Library Science every day as a homemaker. I write about that here. My sisters and I are more intelligent and cultured than we probably would have been otherwise largely in part because my mother put her degree to work in educating us.

My own children are sponges. I have two higher degrees, and I use them every day at home! They have undoubtedly made me a better homemaker.

• Homemaking doesn’t mean my time isn’t as valuable as my husband’s.

It should go without saying, but I’ll go out on a limb anyway – ‘value’ is not simply found in financial remuneration.

• Homemaking means women fail to put themselves forward or “lean in.”

By choosing to set aside my personal career aspirations for a period of time to care for my family, I’m not “opting-out,” leaning back or going backwards.

‘Leaning in’ is a loaded term with negative implications for the individual who takes the opposite posture.

• Homemaking means women are giving into culturally-conditioned gender stereotypes.

Sandberg will have you believe that when women choose to stay home, they are not making a free, informed decision, but are actually responding to culturally-conditioned gender roles (men are leaders/women are nurturers).

Whether you believe Scripture affirms different roles for the genders is beside the point,  because here’s the real rub. When Sandberg and other feminists say I’m giving into stereotypes by choosing to stay at home, they are effectively stripping my decision to be a homemaker of its integrity and sense of sacrifice.

Homemaking is a worthy calling and a difficult challenge. I made my decision to become a homemaker, not because I’m an uneducated victim of a social agenda, but because of personal convictions I made through prayer and reading God’s Word.

I am fully aware that not all working mothers feel the same as Sandberg. I’m also fully aware that many working mothers (including many of my personal friends) invest heavily in their child’s spiritual and moral development in intentional and consistent ways. Rock on, I say!

The reason I believe Sandberg’s book is better left on the bookshelf is not because it encourages more women to work outside the home, but because of its poor view of women who choose not to.

All women should resent the false dichotomy presented by feminist logic – that by choosing to stay home, we are not trying hard, aiming high, dreaming big, taking risks, or excelling where we are.

I resent the stereotype that by choosing to stay at home with my children I am supposedly living in fear, not balanced, and lack strength that comes from charting and achieving a leadership role in my ideal career path. And I absolutely refuse to believe that by staying at home with my boys, that I am letting women down across generations and the globe.

Motherhood is hard enough as it is. Who needs that kind of pressure?

Have you read Lean in? What are your thoughts. Share them in the comments!