Trying to see the good here and I'm not managing to. Of course anyone that expects to change anyone by Friday deserves to have their money taken.

Of course it doesn't say by which Friday. Hmmm.....

Don't you think that it's just possibly a really BAD title?
I've read books by this author and I don't think anything I've read in the past makes me think the book will have the slant you've given it. Unless you've gotten a reader's copy or something and already have read it and you know something we don't. The description makes it sound like a "how to rekindle your marriage" kind of thing. (Like we need another of those out there anyway.)
Seems like really bad title choice and the marketing department is REALLY going to wish they'd rethought that if it affects other people the way it affected you!

A relevant story - http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2009/05/they-occupy-roughly-same-status-in.html

"...most of my male friends are not fathers in any traditional sense at all; they occupy roughly the same status in their households as the help."

An entire generation of sitcoms, magazines, and psychology have programmed us to think this way: Men are simply overgrown children whose job is to work during the day and obey the wife at home - the wife who is the real brains of the family, the chief child-raiser, leader of the home, maker of the decisions, and the only one who can be trusted to take care of the family.

I know there are a lot of idiot, lazybone husbands/dads out there...
But I also know way more husbands and dads who work their butts off and love their kids and still have wives who henpeck, nitpick, and treat them as if nothing will ever be good enough. My fear is that this book plays right into that target audience ...

This is what I have always tried to say when the posts on this blog turn to men in the church. I would add that evangelical churches make little effort to decrease the size of this target audience, and many churches actively encourage women to join its ranks.

Thanks for this post, Jared. Should the thread live for a significant length of time, I promise I will try to be nice in my comments.

The very first Thinklings post ever -- way back in February 2003 -- was called "Joyless Women." :-)

An entire generation of sitcoms, magazines, and psychology have programmed us to think this way: Men are simply overgrown children whose job is to work during the day and obey the wife at home - the wife who is the real brains of the family, the chief child-raiser, leader of the home, maker of the decisions, and the only one who can be trusted to take care of the family.

Word, Inklingstar. Well said.

Also, sadly, this doesn't mean doodly-jack.

Doodly-jack just became my new favorite saying.

OK, Jared, I bite.

You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Roy.

I guess it's possible that a book titled "How to Change Your Husband Into the Person You Want Him To Be" is really about how to trust Jesus and become a gospel-saturated changed person oneself regardless of whether your spouse changes . . . but somehow I doubt it.

Now, now, no need for snark, I was just trying to give a brother in Christ the benefit of the doubt. And in response I'd say it is a book on marriage not a book on trusting Christ.
I'm just saying.

Also, the marketing blurb from your link said this:
he'll help you understand gender differences, develop listening skills, deepen intimacy, and more

All I was saying was that it was possible that it wasn't a man-bashing, woman-loving, isn't the church ruined because of crap fathers kind of book. It might've just been a really crappy title. Or it might just be a crappy book. Who knows?

I don't care one way or another, I'm not gonna read the book, I was just trying to say that from what I read on your link, it didn't come across that way to me.

But I'm just a woman. What do I know? I shouldn't be allowed to talk about important stuff anyway.
JUST KIDDING! Really, just kidding. Just throwing out the other side of the "what I hate about what people say about my sex in churches" arguement. ;)

I just think it's a hideous title that makes a graceless, legalistic promise.

And I really do agree. I wasn't trying to disagree - I really was just trying to figure out a way for it not to truly be as bad as it sounds.

And where's the book on how to fix your dog in 5 days.
Maybe it's coming?

Blech indeed!

Having read (and enjoyed) another one of this author's books, I also doubt that the book will be as bad as the title. I'll wait to cast judgment until I read it, though.

in the previous book I read by this author concerning marriage, he never treated either spouse as a project to be completed - not even close. So, it would be quite the 180 for him to go that route in this book.

An entire generation of sitcoms, magazines, and psychology have programmed us to think this way: Men are simply overgrown children whose job is to work during the day and obey the wife at home - the wife who is the real brains of the family, the chief child-raiser, leader of the home, maker of the decisions, and the only one who can be trusted to take care of the family.

Why you hatin' on the Cosby Show?

Luke 9:49,50
49"Master," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us."

50"Do not stop him," Jesus said, "for whoever is not against you is for you."

Jared, Are you complaining about a fellow Christian author?

I'm going to play devil's advocate. But I wonder if it wasn't an excellent marketing move. What if the title is intended to hook the hen-pecking, belittling, manipulative wife - the woman who wants to change her husband more than anything? And the content is more focused on changing her rather than her husband? What if the goal of the book isn't a new husband, but to instill a better understanding and thus a new perspective on her husband? She'll have a new husband all right, but the new is in her deepened understanding rather than in him. Since the book isn't out yet, this is all speculative, of course.

Bob Sacramento, I think the woman you are thinking of is Shaunti Feldhahn, author of "For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men."

I havent read the book but I heard her interviewed, and I really liked the premise and her comments. Rather than being a "how to change him" book it was a "how to understand him so you can love him better" book. She spent thousands of hours in conversation with hundreds or maybe even thousands of men, doing research for the book. Her goal was to get inside a man's head, to try to understand how men think and how it differs from how women think. Not a new concept but in listening to her talk, there were many times I thought "she really gets it" as she described how a typical man feels about a given scenario, and how it differs from how a woman feels about the same scenario, or expects the man to feel.

Of course the usual caveats apply, that there needs to be a corresponding book for men to understand women, that in some relationships the man will take advantage of the woman who understands him and tries to love him better, that men need to be doing this too, etc.

Karl,

Thanks for the reference. Will have to look that up, even if it is "for women only".

Mara,

I had similar thoughts to yours but, even if the title is just a "hook", I think it says volumes about the evangelical market when a publisher can use such a hook to try to sell a book. So, if you're right, the book might not be that bad, but in the market at large, I think we still have the big attitude problems that Jared is complaining about.

I vote with Jared, Inklingstar and MzEllen. I've seen too much to do otherwise. But I promised to be nice this time, so I'm going to shut up. I just wanted to show the flag.