Wifework
What marriage really means for women
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Wifework is a fiercely argued, in-depth look at the inequitable division of labor between husbands and wives. Bolstering her own personal experience as a twice-married mother of three with substantial research and broad statistical evidence, Susan Maushart explores the theoretical and evolutionary reasons behind marriage inequality. She forces us to consider why 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, and why women are responsible for initiating three-quarters of them. If family life is worth saving, and Maushart passionately believes it is, the job description for wives will have to be rewritten.
Susan Maushart was born in New York and has lived in Australia since 1985. Her first book, Sort of a Place Like Home, won a Festival Award for Literature at the Adelaide Festival in 1994, and her second, The Mask of Motherhood, was published to international acclaim. She is a senior research associate at Curtin University, a columnist for the Australian Magazine and lives in Perth with her three children.
'An often funny dissection of modern marriage...100 percent honest. [A] smart and witty book.' -Publishers Weekly
'With good-humored aplomb, Maushart makes clear she doesn't think marriage or men are "rotten", but that "the way we typically divide up the business-and the pleasure, too-of our adult relationships is inefficient, maladaptive, and unfair.'-Bookpage
'Maushart assembles an overwhelming amount of data documenting how marriage has perpetuated inequities between husband and wife.'-Christian Science Monitor Daily
'Susan Maushart's heartfelt and incendiary Wifework is a brief against traditional marriage that took me back to the galvanizing effect of reading Friedan.' -Salon.com
'A wake-up call for women feeling trapped by marriage.'-Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wifework, "the care and maintenance of men's bodies, minds and egos" is a one-way street, says Maushart, something wives do for husbands at great cost to their mental and physical health, with minimal reciprocation. According to her, even fully employed wives do a disproportionate amount of housework, in addition to "child-care drudgework," "monitoring His physical well-being," "deferring to His agenda in day-to-day conversation," maintaining "His extended family relationships," etc. Maushart (The Mask of Motherhood) counters that he, in contrast, is merely a "volunteer" in the marriage; apart from providing an income, he's really only expected to "turn up" at family events. That such inequality endures at least in Maushart's view despite feminism and economic progress for women, is a question the author explores here. This Australian writer asserts that while men use various denial mechanisms to avoid wifework (like trivializing the importance of cleaning), what's worse is that most wives seem to collude in "maintaining positive illusions" about the inequality in their marriages. Her solution? Readers may expect a call for the end of marriage, but Maushart pleads for the interests of the children, for whom she says divorce is worse than living with marital discord. Instead, she advocates that couples relieve some wifework by assigning broad areas of responsibility (laundry, cooking, etc.) to husbands. And women should expect less, she says; they should realize that "marriage entails a sort of base level of unhappiness that couples need to learn to anticipate and accept." Though that's a downbeat ending for an often funny dissection of modern marriage, it is 100% honest like the rest of this smart and witty book.
