Book Review: I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper

Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile. I’d Trade My Husband for a Housekeeper: Loving Your Marriage after the Baby Carriage. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009. 176 pages.

It’s another Amazon Vine review, and another advice book. If you wonder why I review so many of these, its because there seem to be a lot of them published.

Ashworth and Nobile have geared this book for the married mother who’s finding that, amid rushing out to play dates and managing the household, she’s lost the magic in her marriage. Their ideal researcher is probably a formerly-professional, stay-at-home mom who’s not struggling to make ends meet. It’s not just the authors’ own stories and opinions–they draw on “authorities” (mostly other authors, not all of whom have obvious academic or professional credentials) and have interviewed more than 200 married women with children (as well as a few men). This gives the book a broader feel than a simple personal reminiscence.

It’s not a particularly dense book, with super-sized quotes, short quizzes, and checklists of important points filling up much of the space. Essentially, it’s a guide to how to make a marriage succeed, and it feels like a combination of the management-success book with the matrimonial advice tome, with key takeaways highlighted and repeated for emphasis.

There isn’t much revolutionary in here. Basically, it comes down to: don’t have unrealistic expectations, be patient with each other, and listen to each other. Though it’s not new, that’s never bad advice, and reading about how other people have navigated the obstacles in their marriages–or haven’t–might give married couples some advice for overcoming adversity in theirs.

That being said, you might find some of the stories similar to your own situation, or not at all. There’s a tendency to pit the valiant overworked mom against the stereotypical SportsCenter watching, emotion-denying, dinner-demanding ogre-husband. Luckily, input from real husbands counter-acts some of this bias, but the assumption is, more often than not, that the husband is a big part of the problem. If you’re a guy, it’s an interesting look into how you might seem to your wife, but it’s not necessarily going to correspond to your situation.

Bottom line: it’s an interesting read, but doesn’t have any magical secret or anything revolutionary to say about marriage. If you’re having doubts about your marriage, you will probably benefit from the perspectives found within this book.

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