The secret life of the Opt-out Moms

After the flurry of activity surrounding the controversial Hirshman article, here's another (rather frightening) take on the elite stay-at-home-mom phenomenon. A few of those SAHMs in California formed a Magazine called Total 180, which is ironic because as their children are still young, they are elite SAHMs who went back to the workplace to start a magazine catering to the unique travails of elite SAHMs.

One expects Total 180 to be all about the blissful fulfillment of leaving the rat race behind. But instead, the self-styled CHOs (Chief Household Officers) seem mired in frustration (lack of appreciation from people who don't realize how hard it is to be a SAHM), resentment (one article recommend keeping a sex scorecard to punish husbands who don't do chores), and exhausting minutae.

Here is the Salon interview with one of the founders of Total 180. I agree with Ezra -- it is incredibly regressive stuff under a slender veneer of choice feminism. Of course, if those women are never going to be the June Cleaver moms they aspire to. They've been outside the home. The're not going to deal well with being treated like doormats, and chafe visibly under the restrictive existance of a housewife. Their magazine is the proof.

(By the way -- is the use of 50s fonts and graphics for ironic effect dead or what? Too many people are using it seriously, or even more annoyingly, semi-seriously, and I'm not just talking about the Total 180 website.)