Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

An Imaginary Wife

I read Sandra Tsing Loh's recent New York Times op-ed piece with a sense of recognition. She tells a fantasy story of the mythic housewife of the 20th century, who had dominion over her home and the time and the will to devote to achieving perfection in the home and to dote on her bacon-bringing husband. Today's reality is markedly different. Loh identifies herself as part of the statistic from a recent PEW Research Study that reports that 22% of women now earn more than their spouses, up from 4% in 1970. The study, Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage, makes for fascinating reading and illuminates the drastic changes in women's economic lives over the last 40 years. In Loh's family, she acknowledges, when both parties come home exhausted from work and try to share duties, no one is really in charge of the housework. Decision-making about the home has to be negotiated, rather than just left up to a wife who no longer exists.

For men who are committed to taking up the mantle of domestic work but don't know where to start, you might try Nigel Browning and Jane Moseley's book, How to Satisfy Your Woman Everytime: the Straight Guy's Guide to Housework and Good Grooming. This guide will take you from the basics to more advanced housework topics and will even teach you about moisturizing your feet with mashed fruit. Don't let that metrosexual moisturizing tip prevent you from picking up this book. It's a lighthearted tour through the chores that await you as you pick up the broom and learn to banish stains forever.

Now that most families have two working parents and mom is too tired after work to be the only one making dinner and getting the kids ready for bed, it's time to make some changes. It's not going to be easy, though. Two working moms who are working on creating this balance themselves, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober, have written a book that could help: Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All By Sharing It All and Why It's Great for Your Marriage, Your Career, Your Kids, and You. That mouthful of a title may foreshadow the complexities you face at home when challenging roles and shifting responsibilities. Though this book is aimed primarily at women who want to maintain and grow their careers, there's a fair amount here for the men in their lives as well.

For those ready to give up on the institution, or whose marriages have seen both better and worse, the women who tell their own stories in The Honeymoon's Over: True Stories of Love, Marriage and Divorce may have some words of wisdom for you. Editors Andrea Chapin and Sally Wofford-Girand collect the stories of 21 women writers on topics that range from infidelity, the suicide of a partner,and the blossoming of sexuality. The essays include Terry McMillan on the nationally-televised betrayal by her husband, Lee Montgomery on contemplating infidelity, and Joyce Maynard on the sudden end of her slowly-fraying marriage.