Bebe Moore Campbell spent years interviewing and documenting the personal
struggles of two-career couples for SUCCESSFUL WOMEN, ANGRY MEN, a slight
self-help book that attempts to dislodge the stalling processes that keep the
marriages of ambitious couples from staying together for a smooth ride
through ups and downs and children and the myriad difficulties that every
family faces in go-get 'em America. Why this book is being revisited now, I'm
not sure, but it offers endless stories that will make those who relate feel
better. As far as naming a cure, I'm not sure that it does.
Everybody in the book is a successful woman. I guess Campbell didn't really
care about dealing with women who are still struggling in today's job market
--- she only interviewed women who were on the verge of making partner,
publishing best-selling books, running small companies. The title obviously
reflects this. However, the fact that a number of these women make more than
their husbands and that the husbands can't take it, the fact that the demands
of a working mother are extreme and difficult, the fact that men seem to have
a need to be coddled and stop doing household chores to get back at their
wives, all seems so archaic. There's something in Campbell's high-and-mighty
attitude that will rub most readers the wrong way --- even though all
marriages in this particularly dire corporate climate suffer some indignities
due to lack of time and energy (sex lives first and foremost are the greatest
victims), this book is only about people who have "made" it. Women who work
regular jobs just to support their families aren't involved, and men who have
grown up with a more liberated attitude about the gender roles in a family
situation are not interviewed either.
I feel like this book, first published in 1986, is mulling over territory
that younger readers will not relate to --- after all, we know how hard it's
going to be to be a two-career couple. We have read the magazines, we have
seen Dr. Phil on "Oprah," we know the statistics, and, somehow, people
continue to fall in love, get married, have kids and attempt careers, with
varying degrees of success. There is a lot of conversation about housework
and splitting it up, getting the kids involved, etc. I grew up in the '70s,
and we did that stuff then to try to allow time for my parents to pursue
their careers and activities out of the home. I think this is more of a book
for my mother's generation than for mine.
SUCCESSFUL WOMEN, ANGRY MEN is like a trip to some sociological museum where
these issues haven't been torn apart for decades already. I am sure it was
much more useful and exciting when it was first published; but in 2001, as it
takes its place alongside a healthy and ever-growing array of generalized
self-help tomes about love and family and commitment and ambition and money
and how to keep it all together, it blends into the background, a familiar
story we all know by heart.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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