Happy Housewives [Hardcover]

I love this book. It celebrates the importance and beauty of being a housewife and mother. It is written as though she is sitting at your table chatting. It's charming, amusing, and full of fun fabulous ideas.

the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is b/c I think she doesn't realize that she is in the top 1 percent or so of the nation financially.

Darla assumes everyone is able to join a gym that has child care, go out to lunch on a frequent basis,decorate on a whim

and shop for amusement. hmmmm.

She also advises to make sure the "resorts" you frequent have child care. ha ha!!!

or my favorite, the living room and dining room should be off-limits to children!! sorry kids but you have to play in the bathroom or kitchen or bedroom.

My family is firmly middle-class. We are fine financially and I think we are pretty average but we'd be in a whole lotta debt if I started living this way.

it didn't detract from the basic messages though. so I loved the book and have lent it to my best friend

Funny enough, I am Shine's target audience... a stay-at-home mom who believes my children come first, agrees that cultivating a healthy relationship with my husband is important, buys organic, does my best to take care of myself etc. I thought I would love this book. I WANTED to love this book. I believe we should champion SAHPs more and I was thrilled to find a book that seemed to do just that. But as I was reading I was stunned to find that while I agreed in principle with nearly everything Shine said, I couldn't get past her highly judgemental, snotty way of referring to those different than herself. She chides the women's rights movement for not being more supportive of SAHMs (agreed) and declares she wishes we could all be sisters and supportive of one another. Yet she is highly critical of these "sisters" whose choices differ from her own. My jaw dropped when she referred to an overweight woman in the grocery store a "fat a#$." Shine is not the voice of stay-at-home-moms I was looking for.

I'm the target demographic for Darla Shine's recent self-help book titled Happy Housewives. I'm the right age, I gave up a career and professional training to stay home with two young kids, and I do the majority of the housework in our now seemingly June Cleaveresque household. I don't think or feel like June Cleaver, though. As I read Shine's book, I did wonder if some of my distaste for the book might stem from the fact that I am not as wealthy nor as conservative as the stay-at-home moms she depicts. I think that it could have been more accurately titled Happy Rich Republican Housewives.

There were some good things about this book. It is an honest and heartfelt account of one woman's life and how she took control of the aspects of it that were making her "a whining, miserable, desperate housewife." It is simply written and a quick (sometimes humorous) read, and includes some good recipes and gardening advice.

However. There was a lot that really disturbed me in this happy, "I'm just talking to my girls" motivational book. First and foremost, there is the assertion that staying at home with your kids is always superior to working outside the home. There are no qualifications to this statement. (How about working while your kids are in school? How about part-time work? How about a stay-at-home dad?)

"Many of us are torn between our careers and our families. We work very hard, only to have to give it all up. What choice do you have? This is really what you were meant to do. If you made the choice to get pregnant, you should make the choice to stay home with that baby if you can afford to, and I think most of you could afford to." (p. 19 in Happy Housewives, henceforth HH, emphasis mine).

I also found the advice on being a housewife (aka SAH-mom) unsettling. Darla states that she is unequivocally against the whole "Desperate Housewives" idea of competitive mothering, but she sends very mixed messages with her advice:

"I think one of the biggest reasons housewives have a bad image is that a lot of moms have let themselves go. Admit it, girls. Most housewives are in desperate need of a makeover - out-of-date hairstyles, jeans that should have been thrown out years ago, and worst of all, what I really cannot handle, no makeup!", p. 32, HH.

"We look cute, we're thin, we're in style, and we're hot mamas! At least we think so. We're constantly on top of each other, policing each other to make sure we don't fall off the wagon. We force each other to look good......If you need help, look at what the women are wearing in the magazines. Real women in magazines like More, Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Day, and InStyle.", p. 33, HH.

Thankfully, I can't imagine any of my friends policing what I wear. And I was under the impression that the women shown in most magazines were media creations, not candid snapshots of real women. Even the women in that Dove Campaign for Real Beauty are not really real, if you know what I mean.

"The whole mommy clique thing is stronger than ever in the suburbs. I have been really studying this phenomenon, and it's a clear fashion thing. I notice that the cute, stylish moms hang out with other cute, stylish moms, and the frumpy moms hang out with the other frumpy moms. I told this to my girlfriend, and she told me months later that that statement alone got her off her bottom and to the gym. Now she has a slew of new girlfriends, and she's in the A-list mommy clique - which is stupid, I know, but it's just the way it is. So look good, don't be a bitch, and maybe you could be the new popular mom in town.", p. 164, HH.

This makes Darla's rhetorical question on pg. 31 of HH "Am I shallow? Yes, a bit." more than a little funny.

"I've often noticed in grocery stores that it's the heavy women who are buying a whole lot of junk. The other day when I was grocery shopping I noticed the woman in line in front of me loading a ton of processed snacks onto the checkout counter....She was about eighty pounds overweight, and I wanted to shake her. Her son came up behind me to stand near his mother; he was about twelve years old and at least twenty pounds overweight. I was so angry that I wanted to smash my cart into her big fat ass." p. 39, HH.

Didn't this bother anyone but me? Wasn't there an editor somewhere that said, "Honey, this makes your statements about not being a b*tch and not being in a mommy clique look just bizarre, even if you follow it up with a section about being healthy and exercising and eating organic foods? And what's with that sentence on ridding yourself of toxins and parasites by simply changing your diet?" What parasites? If I get tapeworm or Shigella or any other parasites, you can bet I'll do more than change my diet.

The parts in this book that refer to men are the parts that really distressed me, though, and these are the sections that made me think of that Victorian "separate spheres" ideology, and how similar Happy Housewives is to the "Cult of Domesticity" of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These are the parts that I couldn't wait to read aloud to my husband:

"The secret is that men are simple. They want only three things in life: attention, appreciation and sex. If they cannot get these three things from you, they will either look someplace else or become miserable bastards who annoy you every day of your life." p. 55, HH.

"Ladies, you may think no one out there would want your overweight, sloppy husband who leaves his underwear on the floor and pees all over the toilet bowl, but I promise you there's another woman willing to jump into your side of the bed." p. 54, HH.

"Last year one of my best friends wanted a new dining room set, but her husband was not opening his wallet. I told her to go home, pay some attention to him, act interested in him, initiate some romance, do some nasty deeds that only married couples should do, and guess what? Two weeks later she had the furniture - and a new diamond ring to boot." p. 57, HH.

"And ladies, I advise you to leave the baby with your girlfriend or your mother instead of your husband [snipped out story about her getting highlights and getting called by her dh five times]...You get the idea, girls? I would have had a very peaceful afternoon if my mother or Dana had taken care of the kids. They would have improvised. Men are just not capable of that. Sorry, guys." p. 174, HH.

"Why do so many women insist on doing everything with their husbands? I say have sex together, and that is pretty much all you need to do. Really, sometimes communicating with your husband is overrated. I have my girlfriends for that!" p. 65, HH.

Now, you may argue that these quotes are taken out of context. But I didn't see anything in the context that negated the meaning of these statements, which I think speak for themselves. They reveal an understanding of gender relations that is very different from the one I hold, to put it mildly.

Although Darla is very big on female solidarity (and talks often about the support of her girlfriends), she feels that feminism has ignored (if not actively disrespected) mothers. I certainly agree with her that mothers deserve more respect and social recognition, especially for caregiving roles, but I personally foundnd few resources for changing this attitude in Happy Housewives. Instead of following Darla's ten easy steps "to stop being desperate - and start getting happy", I suggest that other mothers check out some mom's groups that actually empower moms.

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