Rating: 
Summary: Where does she think she got the power to be so vocal?
Review: Its a shame when a woman, who would not be where she is today, without feminism, repeatedly spits fire at the movement. She offers reasons for why feminism isn't working and what feminism has done wrong, but nowhwere does she mention make a logical case for why her way is the right way...and WHY DO MEN HAVE A RIGHT TO JUDGE WHEN WOMEN ARE MISBEHAVING?
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Summary: Feminism Is Gutshot But Doesn't Know It Yet
Review: Mrs. Graglia exposes the anti-family agenda of feminism with direct quotations from its founders making it hard for any open minded reader to continue regarding feminism benignly. This book is loaded with interesting observations which clearly took a lifetime to accumulate. A bravura performance!
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Summary: I find in favor of the plaintiff!
Review: Mrs. Graglia utilizes her professional background in law to make an incredibly well documented (the end notes are incredible!) and exhaustive case against feminism. She accurately and persuasively connects the "victories" of feminism with their destructive results in woman's lives and in our society. This book is an incredible resource for women to help them cogently argue against a wrold view which has consistently removed protection and provision from them and their children. It also gives us "youngsters" insights into the foundations and original goals of the feminist movement. As a stay at home wife and mom, I appreciate the highly skilled representation I receive by this book.
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Summary: A Marvelous Attempt to defend stay-at-home mothers!
Review: Mrs. Graglia's book is a smashing example of what a classic polemic is. She not only attacks the ideas of many modern feminists, she also seeks to defend the role of the stay at home housewife. She notes quite well that what the feminists were after in their hell raising heyday was not so much equality with males as attacks upon women who willingly and happily chose to stay at home. She also delves into the area of consequences that the so-called sexual revolution started, particularly with the advent of no-fault divorce laws.The principle criticism I have with the book is some of the diatribes Mrs. Graglia unleashes upon some feminist goals and statements and for some of her more ambitious statements concerning "the social contract" women had some 50 years ago or so. I think that either attacking feminism OR defending homemakers would have provided more focus for the author's wonderful abilities as a thinker and as a writer. I think that for conservatives, it is worthwhile to note that the terrible review given in Reason magazine denotes some of the traditionalist/libertarian divide within the movement. This book, even with the lack of focus is nevertheless a smashing success because of the trouble the ideas present to many feminists and their sympathizers in society and in academia. It is is also a smashing success because of the attempts to obstruct publication and distribution of the book as noted in a recent issue of American Enterprise magazine. This book is indeed revolutionary in its thinking and a definite must read for one and all.
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Summary: As with feminism, sift out the good parts
Review: Mrs. Graglia's work is an important shoulder-tap on mainstream feminist-dominated Western culture. It details the morally barren and intellectually dishonest bases of the mid-20th Century round of feminism only just now petering out. The author now & then shares her personal taste in, er, conjugal relations, and occasionally employs vivid imagery to make a point. Most amateur reviewers cannot overcome their reactions and revulsions enough to stay with the narrative. For myself, I enjoyed the break from the rather turgid, stuffy writing style loaded with two-dollar words. My Oxford abridged dictionary doesn't even list "fungible"! But the thesis is strong: modern feminism was a big factor in creating the child-hating, sexually perverse culture we live in today. Not surprising, really, since biographies and self-admissions reveal that today's feminism was founded by disgruntled corner cases with just those characteristics. As a result, women actually have a harder time relating to other women, men and children, and have fewer choices today than they did in the mid-1950's, in that the woman choosing to be the core of her family is reviled and pressured to abandon her children and neglect her marriage. Women who prefer to serve strangers in the marketplace are actually subsidized at the cost of traditional families, through "childcare" credits, anti-competitive affirmative action programs, corporate workplace inefficiencies etc. And as Mrs. Graglia notes but IMO does not sufficiently develop, modern (non-)mothering by working women requires the existence of a huge economic underclass of proxy-mothers, who are paid as little a possible for doing the untimately thankless job of making sure little Jill and Johnny don't kill themselves or feel totally abandoned. Anyway, Domestic Tranquility is a valuable read for those wishing a balanced viewpoint. I enjoyed having my brain deprogrammed a bit, and now think I see the world better without the feminist distortions of the dominant culture.
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Summary: Completely unrealistic
Review: Okay, I have a question. How come books like these always assume that everyone lives in an extremely wealthy republican household, with plenty of money so the wife can just quit her job? I wouldn't mind being a stay at home mom, but thats never going to happen. Not in a million years. You see, I live in the REAL WORLD. Out in the real world it takes two salaries to survive. Out in the real world most wives have to work, its not because they have this "power trip" its so they can actually buy their kids enough food and clothes and get them through collage. My mother worked, her mother worked, and I'm sure my great grandmother worked too. And thats because we are part of a class that this book ignores, the "untouchables" aka working class. If you look throughout history, its only been the middle class wives who got the pleasure of staying at home and taking care of the kids. Everyone else was either doing factory work or farm work. But of course Ms. Graglia ignores this basic fact, preferring to see through rose tinted sun glasses at a world where everyone is rich and can survive on one little salary. And no, I'm not a raving feminist, I'm just a realist. I would like to mention though that I find baking cakes, changing diapers, and house keeping about as interesting as a pyschic's lecture...
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Summary: Good golly, Ms. Graglia!
Review: Perhaps staying home all those years has dulled her writing skills. Some of her arguments have "meat", to use a manly term, but she writes in a style that sounds alternately like Cosmo and the New York Review of Books. It's hard to take her wild prose swings between vamp and Kant. As other reviewers have noted, her solipsism is showing: she sees her life experience as the only valid one. It's a tome not, er, objective enough--read "male"--to be taken seriously. Feminism comes in all shapes and sizes, just like women, and to swipe all feminists with the same paintbrush provides an unrealistic portrait. Her classism shows, too--in good ol' redneck country, where I live, most families have two wage earners just to have a trailer, a coupla kids, and food--and unlike her husband, who performed no household duties except "playing with the children in the evenings", these lower middle class dads perform many household and childrearing chores. She seems to know nothing of women and families outside her cocooned socioeconomic status. Let her come visit the hills of Appalachia for a year, and THEN write a book.
Rating:
Summary: Good golly, Ms. Graglia!
Review: Perhaps staying home all those years has dulled her writing skills. Some of her arguments have "meat", to use a manly term, but she writes in a style that sounds alternately like Cosmo and the New York Review of Books. It's hard to take her wild prose swings between vamp and Kant. As other reviewers have noted, her solipsism is showing: she sees her life experience as the only valid one. It's a tome not, er, objective enough--read "male"--to be taken seriously. Feminism comes in all shapes and sizes, just like women, and to swipe all feminists with the same paintbrush provides an unrealistic portrait. Her classism shows, too--in good ol' redneck country, where I live, most families have two wage earners just to have a trailer, a coupla kids, and food--and unlike her husband, who performed no household duties except "playing with the children in the evenings", these lower middle class dads perform many household and childrearing chores. She seems to know nothing of women and families outside her cocooned socioeconomic status. Let her come visit the hills of Appalachia for a year, and THEN write a book.
Rating: 
Summary: another person clueless about feminist
Review: seems like another woman thinks that all feminists are anti-homemaker... which is a concept that came from negative media images of feminism, not feminists! feminism questions why it is women who are always the primary caregiver... and feels that the role of homemaker (if the couple can afford to have someone stay home all the time) can be either gender.
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Summary: Thank you, Carolyn Graglia
Review: Thank you for writing this book, Mrs. Graglia. When I saw your book review on C-span, I knew I wanted to read it. As a homemaker who has had a professional life (BS, RN), I, too, find it very worthwhile to be at home with my young. I am grateful that my husband is able to provide for his family and let me stay "at home" with our two children. We have made financial sacrifices for me to be at home, but it has been worth it. Our children have thrived. I was able to nurse our children for quite some time and they benefited from that. I read FEMININE MYSTIQUE in high school and was quite taken with it. Now I see I am happiest at home with my family. Time to fix breakfast!
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