Are you happy?: A book review

I just finished reading a book that I just HAD to tell you about.  I was browsing the library shelves when I saw Happy Housewives by Darla Shine.  The front of the book says “I was a whining, miserable. desperate Housewife- But I Finally Snapped Out of It . . . You Can, Too!”  See, why I had to get it?  I would read it, report back, and then we would all have fun making fun of it.  Brilliant.

Except half way though I realized, except for one of two things, she actually made some sense.  Well, that went that post.

You know me.  I’m not miserable.  Usually.  Unless I’m puking and peeing at the same time because I’ve been poisoned by proestrogen.  Unless I’m sick.  Unless the boys decide to try to cage fight; while I’m too tired to care and busy trying to get dinner on.  But on the whole, I’m a happy . . . homemaker?  Really, I don’t know if there’s a title I like. 

As I read Shine, I realized she wasn’t really talking to me at first.  She started talking to the upper-class moms who stay at home with the kids but have a nanny and/or cleaning lady.  We’ve all heard about them, and we’ve all heard about their complaining.  Really, Shine tells them to fire the help and do it themselves.  My grandma would say these women were just too bored and needed to work to stop whining.

But as the book went on, I realized she was talking to all moms.  She talked about enjoying your house because that’s where you stay all day, making it a place you want to be.  Shine wrote about how moms need to take care of themselves, feel good about themselves, encouraging our kids through our example of being healthy adults.  She encouraged moms to have a social life, to have hobbies, to have some me time.  Really, that’s what so many stay-at-home moms need, a balance between mom, wife and woman.  And I agreed with her and stopped making fun of when she wrote about fixing your lipstick before your husband comes home.

While at first, I couldn’t stand her writing style of breaking out of “character” to tell me she needed to do something for one of the kids.  I’m a trained writer, so I saw it as poor writing skills, but I then realized she was just being a mom, showing her street cred, if you will.  How many times are we talking to someone on the phone and have to ask for a minute to deal with a kid issue?  My only problem became that she dropped this style three-fourths into the book.  She should have taken it through to the end.

Since I can’t leave it all rainbows and sunshine, I will criticize some of her suggestions.  Like throwing out all your clothes that are older than a year, so that you always have a fresh wardrobe.  That must be nice when you’re rich, but most of us can’t do that.  Or the fact that she says that all houses should have a playroom with a door, so you can shut the door on the mess.  At one point, I could I hide the toys in a kiddie corner, hidden by the couch, but now in my itty, bitty house, the toys are taking over.  (Send reinforcements if I ever miss three days in a row because it means a regime change of the toys.)

But the best part, that I actually tossed the book down so I could call my BFF and howl with laughter with someone, is when Shine talked about her healthy eating.  Talking about Susan Powter’s books, Shine writes, “She gives oatmeal as one example.  She says everyone thinks oatmeal is a healthy food, but have you ever heard of an oat tree?”  Well, no, I haven’t, but that’s because oats grow on grasses like wheat.

So if you’re browsing and in the mood for some light reading to encourage you through your path of stay-at-home motherhood, I suggest you pick up Darla Shine’s Happy Housewives.  Just take some of it with a grain of salt.

Lists, lists, and the program

I believe that all women, but especially housewives, tend to think in lists; I have always believed, against all opposition, that women think in logical sequence, but it was not until I came to empty the pockets of my light summer coat that year that I realized how thoroughly the housekeeping mind falls into the list pattern, how basically the idea of a series of items, following one another docilely, forms the only possible reasonable approach to life if you have to live it with a home and a husband and children, none of whom would dream of following one another docilely.   –Shirley Jackson, Life Among Savages

 

Ain’t that the truth.  By reading many of your posts, I know you all agree with me.

 

I used to use lists sparingly, like when I had a ton of reading and papers to do or that some one was coming to visit and we hadn’t cleaned the condo for weeks. Yet when we were behind the eight ball, like the time my husband convinced me to throw the business Christmas party at our house, it was our buddy J who came to the rescue with his lists: things to buy, things to do, goals to be accomplished.  As J is more organized person, he always told me to set it down in writing.  “You can’t go wrong with the program.”  “Life’s taught me over and over again to stay organized.”  “When my life’s falling apart it’s because I didn’t keep my shit together.”  “One day, Fae, when you’re older, you’ll know that life keeps rubbing your face in it until you figure it out.”  “I’m too stupid not to be organized.”  (Yeah, J has a lot of sayings, but he’s saved our asses more times than can count and that’s a whole post in itself.)  While a few things would be forgotten in the chaos of life, it all worked out in the end.  Until I got pregnant.

 

When I first became pregnant, I lost my mind.  Sure, I was also losing my breakfast and any Baja-style tacos I ate before I realized fetus-Evan hated them, but it was my mind that I missed the most.  (And it still seems to come and go when it pleases.)  I couldn’t remember to buy the milk I actually went to the store for.  I nearly forgot to buy Christmas gifts for a few people.  I missed a month of bills.  I lost my cell phone!  That’s a big deal for someone who NEVER loses anything.  I left my purse in a bathroom stall of a store, only to remember it when I needed cash to by the items with.  (J was there for that, and he let it go only because I was pregnant and my purse, AKA Jaws Lunch Box, was still there.)  So to save my sanity and Wednesday night’s dinner, I started using lists.  Lists for groceries; lists for chores; lists for bills.  And as long as I don’t deviate from the program I’m fine.

 

 

The Program (in list form):

 

1) A Yearly chart of all the bills that need to be paid, so I can check them off.

 

2) An ongoing list of groceries on the fridge.

 

3) A Notebook page: A List of chores for the week, a list of phone calls to make for the week, a list of errands to do that week, the menu for the week.

 

4) Lists of art supplies, things to do if I’m bored, things to buy when we get the scratch.

 

5) Ongoing lists of what to write in the blog.

 

6) List of issues needed to be discussed with my husband.  (After a long day with boys I forget to talk to the husband about the bills to be paid or setting a date for when we’ll leave for Christmas.)

 

 

I hate being this organized.  I’ve always been one of those messy-organized girls, who might have a huge stack of paper on her desk but knows exactly what’s in that stack, which doesn’t work if you have two kids and a messy husband.  But now if I deviate from the program, this house of cards will fall.  Bills will be forgotten, random food won’t be bought, my friend V won’t get her weekly voice mail message of “hi, I know you’re crazy busy, but maybe you could find the time to call me,” and I’ll forget that cute thing Sean did or Evan said, so that I have to write a blog about writing lists.  Of course, I have to relearn the lesson of ALWAYS follow the program about a million times.  I’m a slow learner.

 

Homer:    Blame me if you must, but don't ever speak ill of the Program!  
The Program is rock solid!  The Program is sound!

Flanagan vs working moms and housewives

The problem with Caitlin Flanagan’s The Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing your Inner Housewife is Flanagan demonizes both working and stay-at-home mothers.  She wants to be considered fulfilled and important by being a working mother, but she also wants to create a home atmosphere where she stays to cook dinners and be there for her family.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have it all.  The problem lies that she holds working mothers in contempt because they miss that close bond with their children and believes stay-at-home moms are selfishly demanding me-time from their families, not caring to do the housework or even the mother work.  She believes in a simpler time when housewives were competent, content women who knew how to make a house a home.  This time never existed.

 

Her first look at the culture of marriage is through the bridal magazines, and she sees a world of inflated dreams crushing the very union of marriage.  She’s right.  But she tends to blame feminism for killing the wedding ceremony, leaving the American culture without any understanding of what the ceremony actually means.  Feminism did not kill weddings.  Materialism did.  Watch just one episode of Bridezilla, and you’ll understand that there is something very wrong with the institute of marriage.  Flip through a bridal magazine, and it will whisper of elegant dresses, extravagant dishes, and exotic locals.  The wedding industry cajoles, seduces, pushes weddings to be ever bigger because that is their business, to make weddings a significant occasion with a very significant price tag.  It is the savvy marketing that appeals to the very selfish, self-centered, greedy part of our society.  It is the dream that every girl is a princess, and every bride should have her dream.  Flanagan is right is laughable to see these women walk down the aisle in white dresses, forgetting that this is to symbolize virginity, but Flanagan forgets the white wedding dress only came to popularity with Queen Victoria’s wedding, when before any beautiful dress would do.  We are losing our bridal rituals, but we aren’t losing it to feminism.

 

While I have already discussed Flanagan’s views on the sexless marriage, I will just touch on them briefly.  Flanagan believes women are refusing sex in a passive aggressive way because they are doing all the work.  Because it’s the women’s fault for doing all the work, it is her problem to fix and mend.  I don’t agree at all. I think it’s a two person problem; therefore, it should be fixed by two people.  Another problem with this chapter is her first mention that if men started doing the housework like we women would like (cleaning up the crumbs after the dishes, putting notes in with the kid’s lunches, ironing curtains), men would be demasculinized in our eyes.  Ha.  I know plenty of men that help out with the housework, and they are still very much men.  I would almost bet they are getting more sex than the men I know who don’t help around the house.  Not only can we not keep our men satisfies, we apparently can’t keep a clean, orderly house either.

 

While Flanagan assumed stay-at-home moms could satisfy their men more than working mothers, she believes both women fail miserably when it comes to making a house a home.  Working mothers just pass on these chores to cleaning women, and so does the average stay-at-home mom.  Well, that was news to me.  I can’t even think of another stay-at-home mom that hired a cleaning person (well, except me, for three months after Tornado E’s birth at the insistence of my husband and his administrative assistant.  I fired her as soon as I could figure out how to run the household with a baby).  It is here that I realized the Flanagan is not an average stay-at-home mom, but that she had the means to do more and that she didn’t actually understand the plight of ordinary women.  According the Flanagan, stay-at-home moms go to the movies, the spa, to book clubs, leaving the house work to others, not even knowing the price of milk.  I am certain that most women, especially those who stay at home, do their own house cleaning, do the shopping with a budget, mend shirts, and all the other day to day things that Flanagan loves but never does.  She doesn’t understand the tedium of housework because she never did it.  She NEVER did it.  At this point, Flanagan should be fired as a sage for housewives.

 

Then Flanagan moves on to discussing child rearing.  After a chapter discussing the use of nannies in Victorian England, she then has a chapter about her nanny hired to take care of her sons because all the other stay-at-home moms have one.  Really?  Another interesting fact.  From the look of the blogs out there, most of us can’t find a decent sitter for a measly night out with or without a husband much less another set of hands to take care of the children five days a week.  In this chapter she talks about how inadequate she feels with her babies, and thank god her nanny is so good.  The rest of us mothers out there have felt our moments of inadequacy deep to the soul, and we dealt with it and moved on.  We were the ones that took care of the sick child, changing the sheets, bathing the child, calming the child, not someone else.  Flanagan also mentions how she wanted someone in the house to make it loving and warm, like her mother used to do.  That’s your job now, Mrs. Housewife.  We all miss our mothers taking care of us.  We make the bed so that we can return to it feeling warm and clean.  We cook cookies to eat the dough and have the smell run through the house because it reminds us of home.  Flanagan does not understand the desperate act of mothering. 

 

 

Flanagan is looking for a reason why she feels incompetent.  She finds it in the fact the feminism robbed women of home ec and the knowledge that we would be homemakers, important and loved.  She sees that mothers run after their children, taking them to every activity that can be crammed into their children’s lives, paying homage to the domestic goddess of Martha Stewart, and becoming addicted to organizing and decluttering.  Again I see these as symptoms of materialism and advertising.  Nothing can sell a parent better than the threat that their children may not be using their full potential; hence why many kids have several activities on their plate.  But this has been happening for some time.  My brothers and I were in scouts, volleyball, basketball, softball or baseball, swimming lessons.  If we could have afforded it we would have had music lessons.  My father and his siblings all took various music lessons and did various sports.  The fact that Americans have raised this to a new level of fanaticism is just yet another marketing scheme, trying to take money from parents who are trying to make prodigies or at least make them well-rounded enough to get into a good college.  As long as these activities are done to moderation, then why not schlep a kid around because we are yearning for a better life for that child. 

 

As for Martha Stewart and organization, I feel that Flanagan is right to believe this is a call for a simpler time.  Martha Stewart shows off peace and beauty as unattainable as that is in a house full of kids.  We yearn for a more organized home that runs efficiently leaving us time to redecorate, bake, or just plain relax.  It just makes sense that a busy mother would want this.  But I doubt that every household in those bygone days looked like the Cleaver’s or the Nelson’s.  Kids back then were much like kids today, tornadoes.  I think we set the bar too high to expect a perfectly manicured house while raising sweet, smart, clean kids.  Even my grandma didn’t believe in keeping an immaculate house unless company demands it.  Really Flanagan is living in a different world than what the rest of us live in, one with hired help.

 

The vary essence of this book is Caitlin Flanagan not realizing that housewives back then felt the same way as stay-at-home mothers today.  She even quotes Erma Bombeck as saying she went to see Betty Friedan just to get out of the day’s house work, but Flanagan fails to realize what Bombeck said.  To get out of the house work.  In Flanagan’s mind those fifties and sixties were a time where women were competent and confident in their roles of housewife, not minding the tediousness of the chores that had to be done and redone every day.  Flanagan is looking to understand why she isn’t like that, and because she lost her mother before her boys were older than five, Flanagan never had the same talks that I had with my mom, where my mom admits to being just as confused and anxious as I am.  Flanagan wants to be like her mom but fails because she doesn’t understand her “inner housewife.”  Maybe she doesn’t understand it because she’s never done it.  She instead vilifies all women in what they are trying to do, encouraging them to give up on their dreams of having it all and sending their children to private universities.  I guess Susan Jane Gilman is right.  We’re all the fashion police.