Best New Books: September 2009

Looking for a great new novel on nature, business, or even sports? Check out our picks for these best-bet books.

They suggest, me!  Go here to read the post.

'Superior Wife Syndrome’ aims to save couples

Author explores inequality in marriages, offers tips for happier unions

Posted prior to appearance, September 14, 2009

In "The Superior Wife Syndrome," psychologist Carin Rubenstein explores contemporary marriages and explains how the inequality between husband and wife can damage relationships. The following is an excerpt.

Something is rotten in the state of modern marriage: it's the common expectation that wives should be superior. Wives are supposed to do all, know all, fix all.

Take this regular exchange I have with my husband of several decades. While I'm putting away groceries or cooking dinner or doing laundry, or all three at once, I'll ask him to let the dog out.

To read more, go to Today Show, Books/Relationships

Book Release: The Superior Wife Syndrome

by Cathi Hanauer, September 10, 2009

An Interview with author Carin Rubenstein

Lately, it seems, someone announces daily that marriage is over: socially tedious, sexually dead, and detrimental to wives’ emotional health (because they still do most of the housework, the home management, and the parenting). The latest arrival on the marriage-bashing bandwagon is Carin Rubenstein and her new book, The Superior Wife Syndrome (Touchstone). Having surveyed some 1,500 wives and husbands and scrutinized current research on marriage and love, she concludes that in some two-thirds of marriages today, wives are “more efficient, more decisive, more intuitive, and more competent” than their husbands—and the consequences are dire. Really?

If your husband is really as you present him—a Bart Simpson to your Marge, who whines about getting off the couch to let out the dog while you’re cooking dinner, shelving groceries, doing laundry, or all three—and this even though you both make a living!—why the hell do you stay?

You know, I’ve asked myself that many times. He’s incredibly loyal. And I can be very lazy. And [being a superior wife] gives me a sense of control and power that I don’t have in other places.

To read more, go to Elle Magazine

September 4, 2009  Sarah Hampson's Generation Ex

Meet the Superior Wife:

A wife is rarely just a wife. She is a person who is modified somehow - a reflection, arguably, of the continuing debate (and, some might say, confusion) about how to be one.

There is the Corporate Wife, the Retro Wife, the Political Wife, the Abused Wife, the Good Wife - and now, thanks to Carin Rubenstein, author and social psychologist, there is a new handle: the Superior Wife.

That's the title of Ms. Rubenstein's new book, to be released next week. . .

To read the rest of Hampson's column, go to The Globe and Mail.