Love Honor and Negotiate: Building Partnerships that Last a Lifetime
As soon as couples have children, the authors maintain, they backslide into traditional, unequal gender roles, with women as homemakers and primary caretakers, men as breadwinners. To remedy this, they assert, men must redefine maleness by devoting more time to nurturing and parenting, and by acknowledging that homemaking is as important a contribution to the marriage as earning money; women must assert their needs by challenging their husbands and giving up their culturally instilled desire to be taken care of; and both partners should cut back on work or career goals and concentrate on more togetherness. The authors also urge the men's movement to focus its energies on fighting for on-site day care, flextime and more generous parental leave policies. Viewing marriage as an unarticulated contract that needs to be continually renegotiated, they combine case histories and clinical insights to guide couples through the stress points that can derail a marriage, such as having children, midlife crisis, affairs, in-law troubles. This enlightening handbook will compel couples to reexamine their power games, hidden agendas and sexual and emotional needs. Carter, a family therapist, trains other family therapists at the Family Institute of Westchester, N.Y., which she co-founded. Peters is a writer and teacher.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.