As soon as your children are able to crawl, you child-proof your home. You child-proof your car. You child-proof your yard. But child-proofing a marriage?

Like the latches, gates and locks designed to keep tots out of harm’s way, every marriage needs its own rituals and techniques to keep offspring from sabotaging intimacy and romance.

What Happy Parents Do: The Loving Little Rituals of a Child-Proof Marriage offers bite-sized anecdotes from married couples who’ve preserved the passion and intimacy of marriage despite the strains of raising children.

Authors Carol J. Bruess, Ph.D. & Anna D.H. Kudak, M.A., have obviously done their homework. Happily married themselves, the college professors drew on interviews with hundreds of parents and more than 15 years of research.

Everyone knows that the demands of parenting are enough to dampen marital bliss in the child-centric family culture of 21st-century America. What not enough couples know is how to keep the original “two-pack” intact.

But rather than coming off as a laundry list of chores to add to an already booked life, Bruess and Hudak take 50 real-life examples and then explain why they work.

Nothing in the book offers a last-ditch solution to save a dying marriage. Instead, readers may notice rituals throughout the book similar to special things they do in their everyday lives. “What Happy Parents Do” keeps married couples from taking those special routines for granted and encourages husband and wife to nurture what led them to fall in love in the first place.

For me, this quick, bedside-table book made me take a closer look at the rituals my husband and I had established in our still somewhat-new marriage. Some of the book’s examples seemed goofy at first read. Then I realized that the corny, private stuff sometimes too embarrassing to share is what keeps couples connected – and children out – through the course of a healthy, happy marriage.

Reviewed by Erin Kirkland

I’m ready to stop reading the newspaper altogether. Headlines scream fearful preludes to violence, treachery, and dishonesty that make it difficult to believe sensible people inhabit this big blue marble. Global events have terrified and disgusted us, and shaped how we perceive the leadership of our local, state, and national governments. Enter author Gina Bennett and “National Security Mom“.

Bennett, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Intelligence community with special emphasis on counterterrorism, describes for us in a nutshell our greatest threat to national security policies; us.  Fear, suspicion, and the rapid unraveling of “security”, both as policy and concept, spurred Bennett to look closer at mothering and governing.  “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, “Life is not a fairy tale”, “Choose your friends wisely”. Ponder to the mantras that we as mothers have repeated to our children over and over, apply it to America‘s current governing bodies, and you might see things a bit differently.

Since the U.S. is still floating in the wake of events surrounding September 11th, 2001, Gina Bennett’s candor and blunt realism for what she sees as absolutes for our nation’s success seems too simple at first. But as the book unfolds, page after page of real-life-parenting and real-world intelligence assignments gently lead us towards Bennnett’s theory that “going soft” will make American strong.

Most striking is Bennett’s comparison of national security and the family unit. Indeed, a family’s security “flows from the ability to retain the love and respect family members show each other…” Is this not the basis for the golden rule that children the world over are taught even before their ABC’s? Should not U.S. leaders, as global citizens and parents, be practicing what they have preached as they navigate policy in a world that now appears ready to seize our very souls?

Bennett also addresses the very real sense of fear prevalent since 9-11. Fear is, as anyone who has traveled by air since that day knows, everywhere. It is in our laptops, our shoes, and our cell phones. It resonates through children struggling to understand the departure of a parent to a far off desert. It consumes if we allow it.

The distance between fear and freedom is short. Bennett states, and quite correctly, that terrorists like Osama bin Laden cannot win unless we hand over our freedom; and to do that, we would have to give in to fear. But we are human, too, and Bennett, like all of us, is “tired of being afraid.”

America has the chance to be the ultimate in example-setting by showing respect for its citizens without compromising democratic ideals.  Knowing better than any of us that terrorism must not lead us down the rutted path of security obsession out of fear, Bennett concludes that our influence, if respectful, thoughtful, and candid, can extend to Asia, Africa, South America, and beyond. We are what we are exhibiting to the world. And this, she warns, must be clarified before we can go one step further in raising the bar as parents part of the collective, greater good.

Hey, mamas! I recently had a conversation with an old friend who lamented that her friends never really really really told her how difficult the transition from one child to two would be for her family. So often in life, we search and yearn for the a little extra guidance to help us deal with the challenges that face us. None of those challenges are unique, so why aren’t more people sharing ways to conquer them?

Well, stay-at-home mommas now have an excellent new book to help guide and educate them on their path. “The Stay-At-Home Survival Guide” by Melissa Stanton is here to help. No surprises here. The day of stay-at-home mom is not glamorized (thank god), politicized, or judged. I’d recommend this book to Moms new to the stay-at-home routine, as well as to those mommies who have been at it for years. There’s something in here for everyone.

Stanton is a former magazine editor and it shows in her book. This book reads like the best of a woman’s magazine article. The information is dense and well written. There is expert advice and a few self scoring tests. And best for busy mommies; it is a quick and enjoyable read.

Stanton covers all the basics; the inability to actually do housework with small children underfoot, a change in self-image when transitioning out of the work force and how to renew the zing (aka sex) in your marriage. Plus, she has some really heavy hitters. She spends a good amount of time reviewing finances and getting down to the nitty gritty with Social Security. (Ladies, there are some very important Suzy Orman moments in this book.) Depression and coping techniques are also covered.

So, here’s the only caveat about this book. This book mostly discusses almost entirely only the experiences of college educated career women who become stay-at-home moms in their 30’s and 40’s. That’s me, so I felt INCREDIBLE validation and connectedness to this book. If this describes you, then this book is a more than perfect fit!

Loved it. Loved it. Loved it.

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