Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes

[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]

what an utter load of crap -

first off, the authors (2 of them) imply they are economists when justifying why they wrote the book, then they list the resources they consulted during the writing: lots of primary sources for economics plus some semi-famous economists too. so i'm getting the feeling they aren't actually economist - just thought this would be a good hook.

to be honest, i guessed the authors were male ( i was wrong): such a unnecessarily wordy book, full of ridiculous stereotypes as their 'real-life' examples, and their desperate attempts to be humorous (yes, they fail on that one too). they used the word sex two dozen times in their introduction alone (as in: use sex to get your partner to do something unpleasant, OR if you do a chore for your partner, you'll get sex (and yes i know those are the same example: maybe someone should tell them)

they skim relationship problems with over simplistic solutions like go on strike if your husband doesn't pull his share of the load with respect to the household and children. as if washing only yours and the children's dishes, and leaving his to fester, will do anything but cause a literal stink as the extra sets of dishes (we all have more than the number of people in our family) pile up beside the sink.

and passing on the responsibility of carpooling to a lazy hubby will result in being kicked out of said carpool since most people don't want to wait patiently (or have you not show up at all) as you iron out your marital inequality. yet somehow, in one after another anecdote, problems simply disappeared without the awkward middle phase of suffering before the playing field rights itself.

and in the authors' characterizations, alot of the couples talked either horribly to each other, or about each other - contempt, contempt, contempt.

much of it sounded like there would be no hope of reconciliation (and then: tah-dah! a wife's strike, or a marriage contract, made it all better. yuck - a marriage contract dictating how many back rubs a months and/or who does which chores - why don't you just a declare yourself a business and take love entirely out of the equation?)

i could go one, ad nauseum, but i will finish with one last example of their poor reasoning/ lack of math skills (sort of a requisite skill for economists, don't you think?)

ex

: to cure hubby's bad behavior (in this case - losing his temper), wife offers sex in return for 3 days in a row of good behavior, 2 nights of sex in a row if hubby is 'good' for a week, and an 'anything goes' sex card if hubby is 'good' for a full month. so here's how a month would go if hubby was cured of said behavior (and let's not forget this is the point, you want this to happen, you're happy it gets to this point...):

day 3 - sex, day 6 - sex, day 7 & 8 - back-to-back sex reward for the one week goal, day 9 - sex, day 12 - sex, day 14 & 15 - (another week so) sex & sex, day 15 (yup, again) sex for the every 3 days (so that's 2 sessions in one day, or maybe you push it to day 16), day 18 - sex, day 21 - sex, but that's also another week so day 21 & 22 - sex & sex, so maybe you push that extra time to day 23, day 24 - sex, day 27 - sex, day 28 & 29 - sex & sex b/c another week, day 30 - sex, oops, but day 30 is also the end of the month and so maybe you tack on a ménage à trois what with the 'anything goes' reward. or bump that to day 31.

i'll add that up for you: 19 times over 30 days. ouch.