It had to be said ... and thanks to Ann Crittenden for saying it. Her book, If You've Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything is one of those works that definitely upholds common sense (parenting is damn good preparation for business) over convention wisdom (businesses should avoid mothers and would-be mother like the plague). Much of the book is devoted to painstakingly listing the strengths endowed by parenthood -- multitasking, patience, perspective -- and giving anecdote after anecdote from (mostly) women who have put those lessons to work.

The sheer volume of the voices in the book -- Crittenden interviewed more than 100 people on the lessons of parenthood -- makes the case for Crittenden, but it isn't until the last couple of chapters in the book that she really gets to the deep issue. It's probably fair to say that sensitive leadership qualities are increasingly "in" when it comes to business management theory, but practice still lags behind (modern American business is reflected in the culture by "The Apprentice." Donald Trump is hardly a new-school boss ...). In the last couple of chapters, Crittenden tries to tackle this, but it's clear that there's room to grow. In part, she says, women have to begin making it to the top and then changing the culture. And, in part, she suggests that parents need to start flaunting their parenthood more, offering ways to stick kid-raising skills on a resume.

But my bet is that businesses are a long way from rewarding parents, especially those that leave the workforce for family reasons. The best case scenario is that these parents not be particularly punished. And hopefully the book will help make that best case scenario more possible.

There are some small quibbles: Crittenden never really makes clear whether some parents (or parenting styles) are better preparation, and she lumps all parents in together. This is an unfortunate omission. I am sure that full-time at-home parents have learned different lessons that primary caretakers who also work outside the home. These different but valid choices no doubt give rise to different skills, and I'd have liked to see that drawn out.

As an aside, one of the stranger phenomena I noticed in the book was the sex division. Most of the people Crittenden spoke to were women, a fact that she justified by looking at the small number of at-home dads. But when it comes to the difficultly of getting back into the workforce, she relied on the Wall Street Journal story on at-home dads re-entering work life. It's strange that there hasn't been a push to look at the same problem from a mother's point of view. As much as I like to celebrate articles that emphasize that dads are caregivers, too, the equality bells go off when I realize that at-home moms being interested in paid work seems to be ignored.