Paula Szyuchman and Jenny Anderson. Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes. New York: Random House, 2011. 352 pages.
Spousonomics is another addition to the growing popular economics literature that makes concepts like division of labor, comparative advantage, and information asymmetry digestible for a lay audience. As such, its publication is a good thing: after all, the more people know about how societies handle scarcity, the better. This book’s hook is that it attempts to apply economic theory to marital relations…and, as the authors repeatedly point out, that means ALL marital relations.
With ten chapters, each focused around a single idea from economics (to the three listed above, add also loss aversion, moral hazard, and several others), the authors show the reader how, by applying lessons learned from economists, they can have a better marriage–and, as they point out more than once, more sex. Each chapter has a similar format: the authors explain the concept using both textbook phraseology (although there’s blessedly little of that) and examples from real life, then present several “case studies” that show how different couples actually confront the issue the chapter illuminates.
As an introduction to economic ideas it’s not bad, and it might get you thinking about how you make decisions and relate to your spouse and children in a different way. Many of the couples profiled, however, were not easy to empathize with, to put it politely; some seemed downright annoying. Also, a lot of the spouses seemed…stereotypical, with the hubby obsessed by “the game” and loafing around, and the wife doing all the housework, or with one a workaholic and the other a free spirit. In the course of researching the book, the authors talked to more than two thousand people, so this might just be what they found. Maybe most people (or most people in their sample) really are that predictable.
But the general concepts the authors highlight are all valid, and it wouldn’t hurt to give their approach a try. Like all advice books, though, this one has its limits. It’s easy to tell people to be dispassionate when assessing their relationships; probably a lot harder to have that Vulcan reserve when you’ve just been vomited on, have heard nothing but crying for two hours, and your spouse is out doing pilates/pickup basketball/reviewing books/whatever.
Overall it’s an interesting book that has several great concepts; whether its a truly useful one is likely up to the reader….and his/her spouse.