Stay At Home Survival Guide

When Mother Talk offered up an opportunity to review Melissa Stanton's Stay-at-Home Survival Guide (Field-Tested Strategies for Staying Smart, Sane, and Connected When You're Raising Kids at Home), I jumped because secretly? I kind of want to be a stay-at-home mother. Next fall, my daughter will be heading off to kindergarten, and even though it's "full-day" kindergarten, there aren't enough hours for me to be able to get into the city and back to continue working as I do. So, either I need to take that sabbatical I've been dreaming of, find a part time job near home, or sign up her for the school-based childcare at the beginning and end of the day.

Stanton was, once upon a time, a magazine editor in NYC and is now a stay-at-home mother. The persona that comes through in the book is a defensive one - it feels as though she's writing the book to validate something, to prove that she's still got those Type A chops, even though she's no longer a high powered magazine executive.

Interestingly, the book doesn't really seem like a guide to staying home with kids, but a general guide to raising kids. More often than not, all you have to do is take "stay-at-home" out of one of Stanton's sentences and the sentence rings true for all parents. Like here: "By the time a stay-at-home mom, like me or you, has spent the day caring for kids and keeping a house together gets into bed, she's pooped." Take "stay-at-home" out of that sentence, and add in "earning a living" and you've described me to a T, along with every mother I know.

Woven throughout the book are anecdotes Stanton garnered from a survey of about 60 mothers. It's a very warm touch, and the book ends with three pages of "Final Words of Wisdom from the Experts". But again, most of those words of wisdom are equally applicable to stay-at-home parents and all other parents.

There's plenty of material that I found just plain irritating, starting with her frequent use of the word "gal". At one point, she sticks in a side bar of "great (little) escapes" that is so unimaginative as to be comically depressing: "watch Oprah", "email friends or family", "shop for yourself, by yourself". Really - do you need someone to write out a list like that and put it in a book? I don't think so.

Stanton does have some useful information, especially regarding issues about money (like what happens to your future Social Security earnings if you stop paying into the system for a while). My overall takeaway about her parenting style and parenting advice is that she's saying take pride in what you do and it's okay to not always love being a mom. That's good advice - but not advice that's uniquely needed by stay-at-home parents, it applies to all of us.

In short, if I do take some time off from working full-time, I don't think I'll need this book. It just doesn't have enough to offer beyond common-sense tips that seem self-evident. Then again, I'm not much for self-help books, so maybe I'm simply not the right demographic for the book regardless of my employment status.

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If you think it might be a useful book for you, I'm giving away my copy. Leave a comment with your email address, by the end of the day on Monday 6/16, and I'll make a random pick on Tuesday.