Book #124: How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids by Jancee Dunn

I heard about this book from a book blog I follow and it sounded funny and informative, and I needed an audiobook to get through while waiting for the next Inspector Gamache book, so I checked this one out. Dunn goes through many different reasons why couples have problems after having kids, and especially through her own relationship problems with her own husband after they had their daughter. Her husband wasn't helping out enough, and she was having rage and anger issues and they were fighting a lot. However, they sound like very normal, nice people (particularly her husband) and their issues were pretty normal to most couples, I'm guessing. They went to several different types of couples therapy, she talked to lots of experts and read lots of research, and manages to make her personal journey with her husband towards improving their marriage with the addition of their daughter into an interesting story and an informative lesson for other people having issues as well.

I didn't choose to read this book because I felt like we needed it--Tommy is the most helpful and engaged husband and father I know (and I'm not just saying that, he really is). But as I listened, I couldn't help feeling aghast at some of the assumptions that many couples have to work through, like the husband feeling like he needs to relax all weekend after a hard week at work and therefore the wife still needs to do all the childcare and housework over the weekends. First of all, I would never stand for that, and second of all, are you kidding? That is absolutely ridiculous to me, and I'm glad Dunn and her experts called that out too. She gives lots of ways to divvy up household chores and to spend your weekends so that everyone feels rejuvenated by the beginning of the next week, and I thought the ideas were good, but I'm also really glad that those issues are not ones that cause contention in our family--mainly because Tommy is all-in as a parents and co-worker in running our household. I also felt like this book, and others that I've read lately (like 168 Hours), made the weekend seem like this precious time where everything must be FUN FUN FUN and QUALITY TIME every minute with your kids or for yourself, but I disagree with that assumption on principle and really feel like it's not our job as parents to make everything super fun for the kids and that instead it's good for us to spend time working on the weekends (and definitely doing fun things sometimes, but not every single weekend). But overall, I thought this book could definitely be useful to people and I enjoyed listening to it.