Has anyone read "misconceptions" by Naomi Wolf? I need someone to fulminate with!

[lisianthus]

The chapter about how the author's DH and her friends' DHs reacted upon becoming fathers wound me up a bit. It sounds as if they all started acting like jerks, controlling money, vetoing decisions, etc. Despite this, she keeps repeating that such-and-such is "a really nice guy" a "good guy" and so on.

Um, no he isn't - he's acting like a complete tool! And the bit where her brother (after his wife gave up her graduate degree studies and moved to a different state to allow him to take a different job) smugly explained that women will let men do this because they love the men and men will use this to pressure them to do things was ultra annoying and Naomi Wolf was STILL insisting that he was a terrific guy.

Terrific guys don't emotionally blackmail people!

grrr.

[vouvrey]

There are some women (see other Mumsnet threads esp in relationship section) who think that just not beating you/raping you/cheating on you/ stealing from you etc makes a man a good DP/DH.

Men aren't going to up their standards until we up ours.

[OldLadyKnowsNothing]

I haven't read it, but if men behave "like tools" when they become fathers, perhaps it's because they're scared, and want/need to feel that control? Doesn't mean they're not nice guys, just that they're, y'know, human. If the controlling becomes a long-term part of the relationship, that's different.

But if there's more to it than that (and there may well be, as I said I haven't read it) I'm sure this thread will enlighten me.

[SpringHeeledJack]

I haven't read the book recently but I remember it pretty well. It made me fucking fuuuurious!

I thought NW was trying to highlight how most so-called Nice Guys behave when they become fathers? I certainly don't remember sensing that she approved of their behaviour in any way. Quite the opposite

[maktaitai]

I did read it but thought the whole book was fairly annoying tbh. Must say though that the single most helpful thing about labour I read in pregnancy was in Misconceptions - she was quoting a midwife, possibly from a Central American country? who said 'we tell women they must be brave in labour'. That resonated with me all through late preg and labour itself - it was a good way of saying 'it's going to farking hurt but it will be OK' without scaring the pants off the pregnant.

[OldLadyKnowsNothing]

Do you know, I seem to recall that the reason I haven't read it is that it got such crap reviews, especially in the feminist press.

[blackcurrants]

Arrrgh it made me SO CROSS! I kept thinking: WHY is he such a good guy if he's a lazy complacent sod who lets his stressed wife do all the child-related-work because he 'knows she won't throw him out now we have kids' - ARGH!

I thought it did a good job of articulating some of the unspoken "I am lost" feelings that a certain type of new mum gets, but I thought it did a shitty job of holding to account the situations, circumstances (and crap husbands!) that contribute to that desperate emotion.

That chapter made me spitting mad with the useless husbands and fathers, but not so much with the author. I don't love Naomi Woolf but I thought that book was interesting. Perhaps some of her "and this was a nice guy!" was to highlight that even 'decent' men were being shits about this kind of thing?

[TheCrackFox]

Well, I read this book about 8 yrs ago and now seem to have lost the book so my memories are a little hazy.

However, I do think she had a point. Men (not all) do seem to get a little lazy as they assume that women want/need/know all about how to care for small children. It can be hard for a women amongst the aftermath of birth/PND/sheer terror to put in place strong boundaries. There have been plenty of threads on Mumsnet about how they married a seemingly lovely guy but the arrival of children seemed to change him.

[lisianthus]

Hi all!

Yes, blackcurrant summed up my reaction to this chapter. It was the controlling stuff that annoyed me, particularly as the way NW described it, it seemed to get worse over time, and the women felt less and less able to challenge it due to the fact that they now had a child and felt less able to walk away from the relationship. And then NW would say "but these are all nice guys who would have considered themselves feminists" .

It wasn't so much that she approved of the behaviour - I don't think she did. It was that she kept referring to them as nice guys in a "but he's OK really way. I think a man who starts acting like this is not "a nice guy".

If this is a widespread thing as Crackfox points out, then that's rather sad.

I need to get myself another, better book.