I just finished reading To Hell With All That this morning after I woke up way too early and couldn't go back to sleep. I read a lot of it in the hospital the other morning, between bouts of passing out due to exhaustion and morphine.

My opinion and memory of the book is therefore some what sketchy, but overall, I would give it a thumbs up. Flanagan manages to capture the various aspects of both modern and old time housewifery in both their good and bad points. Why some women were happy to be housewives; why a lot of them were unhappy and gave it up; why many modern women long for "the old days" even if they don't really have any intention of living them out.

She has an interesting perspective on the whole thing, being one who obviously loved and admired her mother and the kind of house she spent her early years in with a housewife tending to home and hearth. Yet, she is a working mom, who, even when she stayed home with her sons, still had a nanny and other help, and freely admits that she's not the one doing the dishes, washing the clothes or many of the other daily tasks of household management.

Flanagan isn't a conservative and as I said, doesn't even live the typical life of a housewife. Still, she certainly has her finger on the pulse of those who do stay home, cook, clean, and take care of the house and children, and those who no matter their work circumstances and busy lives, long -- in at least some amorphous way -- to be a little more like Martha Stewart.