Happy Housewives

Says former desperate housewife Darla Shine to stay-at-home moms everywhere: What have you got to complain about? A modern-day guide to keeping house, raising kids, and loving life. Darla Shine was once a desperate housewife. Being at home with two small children and a husband who was rarely home was enough to drive her crazy. She left her high-profile job as a television producer after her son was born, while her husband continued to move up the corporate ladder. Like many of her stay-at-home-mom friends, Shine employed a housekeeper and baby-sitters so she could spend her time running to the salon, the club, and out to lunch. Then one day she was whining to her mother about how terrible her life was, and her mother yelled at her to wake up and stop being so selfish. It was just the wakeup call she needed!The desperate housewife craze of today is sending the wrong message to women and their children everywhere, says Shine. When did being a good mom and being proud to stay home with the kids go out of style? When did it become acceptable to cheat on your husband? When did mothers start dressing like their teenage daughters? Shine finds the standards of today's desperate housewives astonishingly low, and she has set out to teach women how they can be good mothers, look good, and feel good about the choices they make. Being a housewife does not mean you are on house arrest or can't be satisfied in your marriage. So step up, realize that you want to be home with your children, and embrace your life.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction, Self-Help. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.