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She therefore misses out on stories that could illuminate what friendships look like in a state of economic insecurity, when friends might take on support roles we normally peg to families. Schaefer also offered a limited sense of what friendship looks like for women in their 60s, 70s and beyond — women who are less likely to have families and work to consume their worlds, and for whom friendship might be ever more crucial. She includes a wide range of historical and cultural sources, but this would have been a stronger book had those choices been matched in scope by her interviews.
A very mediocre read about a very specific type of female friendship... Lacks diverse perspectives and depth of any kind really... A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain.
More Books by Kayleen Schaefer
In an age where woman have many more ways to connect, Schaefer points out how our digital ways affect friendships. She tells a story of a woman wishing for a particular group of friends. Instead of bemoaning the lack of the group, she started one herself using Meetup. Schaefer tells of her own efforts to stay connected to a friend in Australia. I understand this, but I also think these pictures were an important start in seeing groups of women in a different way.
But I DON'T think they're more important than my marriage or my family relationships. I think ALL my relationships in my life are important and I balance them accordingly. I think positive female friendship is an incredible worthy subject to dissect and discuss, so I was disappointed that Text Me When You Get Home only scratched the surface. I felt like Schaefer would quickly list positive female relationships in pop culture without going on to further analyze them or the effect they had on our greater society. I enjoyed Text Me When You Get Home, but I also wanted it to go deeper.
Interesting read with contradictory messages
I didn’t expect to have a chapter in which she discussed her anti-Trump views and how it helped bonding with her female friends while marching. It was just a complete turnoff for me being a strong supporter of our current president. I’m OK with people having their political views that differ from mine but I just didn’t expect it in this book.
I'm going to go out on a limb and also assume most of them are not limited by any disabilities and aren't queer and are probably not marginalized in any other way than that which comes from being perceived as a woman. A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to - and makes the case for - the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us stronger than ever before. Other than that, I would have also liked a deeper dive into conflict in female friendships, or any semblance of critical thinking. Overall, this was a book I am very glad that I read. There is a lot contained in it, but at times I think Schaefer could have gone a little further with her analysis.
My Life as a Goddess
It used to be that when women married and had kids, they moved away from their female friends. They would befriend the mothers of their kids friends, rather than continuing to see the singleton friend from their career days. Now, with the blurring of lines between home, parenting, marriage, and career, women expect to prioritize female friends higher than before. She uses anecdotal evidence to prove that we used to think of girls as sweet and nice but now we tend to think of girls as cruel and catty. At any rate, this new emergence of Mean Girls is why so many women don't have or want female friends. But if we just stop assuming girls are mean, then we can bypass that myth and become better friends with other women.
I have read other books that make this point beautifully...I didn't read it here. She went on to assume it was impossible to be friends with girls so she made friends with guys and had no girlfriends or best friends until she wised up and found her friend set and they're all in love and everything is lovely. Also, media shows us that there are no healthy female friendships but we shouldn't listen to them because she is living proof that #squads exist and you need one. It was too chatty, anecdotal, heavy on pop culture references and felt very specific to young, white privileged middle or upper middle class women’s experiences. I don’t know, I’m not sure what I wanted from this book but I didn’t get it.
Currently Reading
Like anyone gathering life experience, Schaefer comes to realize that women are as nuanced and deep as she believes herself to be. She abandons the marriage credo and begins devoting that energy into growing her friendships. But her view on female friendships isn't unique among women of her generation. She's in her seventies now, and no longer feels like she has to soldier on being devoted only to her family.
She just didn't understand that fraternities and sororities pair up even though she's clearly watched all the movies and shows about this. Later, she expresses how foolish she was to think the sorority girls who were soooo excited to see her were truly excited to see her during rush. Again, despite being socially trained by Hollywood, if not by the women in her family circles, she didn't understand how this all works. All she seemed to do is interview a handful of people about how they met their best friends, and then watched whatever was on TV that day and commented on the female relationships that were being portrayed. I will be publishing my socio-economical analysis of the ABC show 'Once Upon a Time' any day now. Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts?
It made me want to text every one of my female friends to check in and tell them they are loved, or even to ask them if they wanted to spend time together sometime soon. It made me feel like there's a part of my life that could use some loving attention, and I'm excited to provide it. I really enjoyed most of this book and luckily she didn’t go off in a political direction until towards the end. It really helped me self reflect my relationships with women and it makes sense tying our current mentalities back to the social norms of the 70s and prior.
It is a very timely and important book, however, and one I'm so glad was published. It made me realize how lucky I am to have all the women in my life that I do, both past and present, and recognize that the "all-in-one" family idea is perhaps no longer relevant for our time. Instead, we all need a group of female friends who will text us when they get home. An examination of the importance of female friendship, Text Me When You Get Home is sure to inspire a reflection about the role of female friendship in your life.
The author is self indulgent and weaves her fantastic state of friendship affairs in and out of historic discusssion of the evolution of feminine friendship as represented on television. I read to avoid television and reading this book is like watching all the television shows I’ve avoided . The author replays way too much of mentioned show episodes, and as a premise this hardly reads as a sociological analysis but more as a bunch of chicks bonding over favorite TV shows as they daintily throwback a glass of Prosecco . It’s a shame because I think this analysis is meaningful to make and value can be gained for those whom may struggle with female friendships, groups of women, or just don’t fit into the shiny new Stepford gal personae. Perhaps the author can submit this book to TV guide and gain the response they’re seeking for this effort.
All the other white girls on "Friends" and any other white girls you can think of who have played friends on TV. She does give a shout out to Oprah and Gayle and I think I remember her saying something about The Joy Luck Club but that's pretty much all you get for women of color. Don't go looking for Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams.
I've read a lot of nonfiction books, and they can often move slowly, even if they are saying important things. Not so withText Me When You Get Home; I zipped through this one in just two days and truly enjoyed every second of it. Men believed their friendships helped them grow spiritually-they were based on being good to one another, behavior they assumed would bring them closer to God. Women, on the other hand, could never be so virtuous. "Only men were strong enough to maintain a serene, mostly rational, idealistic friendship with another person," Sandidge says. She didn't have any other friends, or want any, which is inconceivable to me.
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