TUESDAY, MAY 24 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
lines about my choices, includ-
ing work, day care and divorce.
But Coontz shows how deeply
flawed such research can be.
She points out that most stud-
ies of the effects of maternal
employment on children were
suspect because they often “ex-
clude the effects of paternal
employment on children.” Even
back in 199 2 she wrote, “A s a
historian, I suspect that the
truly dysfunctional thing about
American parenting is that it is
made out to be such a frighten-
ingly pivotal, private, and ex-
clusive job.” (Although a re-
vised and updated edition was
published in 2016, the events of
the past two years alone beg for
another one.)
Coontz goes on to examine
how parenting is both harder
and easier than experts admit
and that, ultimately, so much of
how kids turn out isn’t within
our control. In fact, “if there is
any pattern to be found over the
course of history, it is that
children do best in societies
where child rearing is consid-
ered too important to be left
entirely to parents.” I imagined
reading this when my kids were
little. Would knowing this have
made me more open to creating
care networks with friends in-
stead of avoiding “owing” any-
one who offered the slightest
bit of help? Would I still have
believed that to be “good” par-
ents my husband and I had to
do absolutely everything on our
own? At the very least I would
have applied a more critical
lens to negative headlines
about working mothers and day
care, instead of allowing them
to cast gloomy shadows in my
brain and across my heart.
But perhaps what I needed to
hear most is that there never
was, and probably never will be,
one foolproof blueprint for mar-
riage or parenting. And instead
of examining whether my mar-
riage m et i mpossible standards, I
should have examined where
those standards came from in
the first place. It turns out his-
tory does have its place, and it’s
in the home.Kimberly Harrington is the author
of “But You Seemed So Happy,” a
finalist for the Vermont Book Award,
and “A mateur Hour.” She’s also a
columnist and regular contributor to
McSweeney’s Internet Te ndency.Styles’s “Falling,” Bryan predict-
ed, “You’re gonna ‘aw, shucks’
your way to the top.”
At one point, Thompson tested
positive for the coronavirus and
had to sing remotely from a hotel
room, but viewers still liked him
enough to vote him through.
Even Underwood got in on
Thompson’s feel-good story
when she mentored the finalists
in one of the last weeks of the
competition and told him she
could relate to his small-town
upbringing.
“I do feel like this show was
created for people l ike me and for
people like Noah, who didn’t
dare to dream that big but knew
they wanted to do something,”
the country superstar said as she
started to cry. “So it’s a beautiful
thing.”
By the finale, though it was a
close race with HunterGirl,
Thompson appeared destined for
the crown. After he sang Bruce
Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire,”
Richie congratulated him on
finding his stage persona. “When
you walk out on that stage now,
you look, you act, you sound like
yourself. And that is called an
artist, my friend,” Richie told
him. “You have now graduated to
that wonderful stage of your life.
Enjoy it.”
Perry chimed in with some
prescient words. “I think you just
swooped in and grabbed every
heart in America by singing that
song,” she said. “You’re just a
good guy from Kentucky that
might win ‘American Idol.’ ”ers especially seem to have the
edge, a fact that even the judges
recognize. Thompson, from Lou-
isa, Ky., started off the show
seemingly terrified of his own
shadow. His storyline was that he
had no confidence and was so
insecure that his co-worker had
to sign him up to audition. “My
family, they believe in me. The
guys I work with believe in me. I
just never believed in myself,” he
told the camera.
But in his first audition, the
judges were dazzled by his take
on Kameron Marlowe’s “Giving
You Up.” And they really loved
that he was a construction work-
er who wanted to succeed so he
could support his baby son.
“You are the American
Dream,” Perry told him. Never
one to back down from an inspi-
rational story, Seacrest later in-
troduced him by saying, “Here
comes Noah, a long way from
hanging Sheetrock to the Holly-
wood stage.”
As the episodes went on,
Thompson found his groove and
started to become more comfort-
able onstage, though the judges
often praised his humility, pre-
dicting that would take him far.
“Just keep being the country
boy that’s standing right there. I
must say, there’s a sweet spot in
your voice that when you start
really, really recognizing it, you
might win the whole competi-
tion,” Bryan said after Thompson
sang “Blue Side of the Mountain”
by the SteelDrivers. The next
week, when he covered Harryous favorite, Thompson’s victory
was not surprising. Neither is
one of the reasons for his win:
Bryan may have thought it was
the year of the country girl, but
on “A merican Idol,” it has be-
come increasingly difficult for
anyone to triumph over the
country boy.
Thompson is now the fourth
consecutive male “Idol” cham-
pion who is also a country singer,
following Trent Harmon (Season
15), Laine Hardy (Season 17) and
Chayce Beckham (Season 19).
The only female country singer
winner in “Idol” history is Carrie
Underwood, who was named the
winner in Season 4 nearly two
decades ago.
Reality singing competitions
have always favored country
singers, a fact that frequently
frustrates viewers who don’t en-
joy the genre; it’s rumored that
Adam Levine felt the same way,
and it may have contributed to
why he left “The Voice.” But the
country fan base is loyal, and
Nashville is a particularly wel-
coming place for singers after
reality shows. Near the start of
the finale, Perry theorized that
HunterGirl and Thompson
might split the country vote and
hand the win to 20-year-old sing-
er-songwriter Leah Marlene —
though any longtime viewer
could have told her that was
unlikely. (Marlene wound up in
third place.)
On “Idol,” male country sing-IDOL FROM C1‘Idol’ winner’s historical edgeERIC MCCANDLESS/ABC
From left, Leah Marlene, Noah Thompson and HunterGirl (a.k.a. Hunter Wolkonowski) on “American
Idol,” which Thompson won. It’s been nearly two decades since a female country singer won it all.shaky version of “Man! I Feel Like
a Woman” with Shania Twain
(who clearly adored him) is not to
be found here. “Harry’s House” is
pleasant and mild and distinctly
unadventurous, calculated to oc-
casionally titillate but never of-
fend. It whipsaws from breezy
summer pop to other kinds of
summer pop: Without the sheer
force of Styles’s charm, which has
always exerted a sort of gravita-
tional pull, these songs would
float away from him.
Intended to be a mood, “Harry’s
House” is often good, always ap-
pealing, but infrequently interest-
ing. It’s meant to be background
music at a barbecue or summer
pool party, but Styles i s too good at
what he does — and at too crucial
a point in his career — for that to
be enough.tudes. You won’t f eel as if you know
Styles any better when it’s over — a
wise move for an overexposure-
courting celebrity in a public rela-
tionship, but criminally deficient
for a would-be confessional singer-
songwriter.
Most of the things he admits to
enjoying are the usual Internet
Boyfriend things no one could rea-
sonably object to: riding bicycles,
the occasional edible, sexy time by
the beach, hash browns with maple
syrup. There are careful references
to cocaine, but they seem wedged
in, as if somebody in marketing
thought Styles should have a vice.
Styles is one of pop’s most self-
effacing stars, and the one least
likely to center himself in his own
narrative. He is deferential to the
point of absurdity. He wants only
what you want. He cares only
about what you care a bout. On the
gorgeous folk ballad “Matilda,” he
comforts a woman whose family
didn’t love her (“It’s none of my
business/ But it’s just been on my
mind”). Elsewhere, he worries
about her injuring herself (“You
stub your toe or break your cam-
era,” he croons consolingly on the
modestly funky “Late Night Talk-
ing.” “I’ll do everything I can to
help you through”). On the gentle
“Boyfriends,” he’s a sympathetic
onlooker who is just as confused
as you are about the things men
do (“Boyfriends, are they just pre-
tending?”). Styles’s biggest hit,
“Watermelon Sugar,” showed a
gift for non-embarrassing sexual
metaphors that eludes him here,
which is why we’re left with “Cin-
ema” (“I bring the pop to the
cinema/ You pop when we get
intimate”), the closest the album
gets to an outright clunker.
“Harry’s House” shows off
Styles’s unorthodox mixture of in-
fluences, their threatening edges
sanded down. Sometimes it
sounds like what would have hap-
pened if Freddie Mercury went to
Laurel Canyon and wrote a song
with A-ha. Other times, it’s a mild
soft-rock album that nudges you
hopefully with its nose, so eager to
please it feels as if a golden re-
triever made it.
The Harry Styles who per-
formed last month at C oachella in
a glittery jumpsuit, singing a
MUSIC REVIEW FROM C1
riage wouldn’t have ended re-
gardless, but as I reflected on
Coontz’s work, I thought about
how I might have been happier
had I discovered it sooner. I
think I would have appreciated
the aspects of our relationship
that worked well instead of fo-
cusing on where I found it lack-
ing.
Coontz convincingly demon-
strates that there were no good
ol’ days: “In nineteenth-century
America, the ‘age of consent’ for
girls in many states was as low as
nine or ten, w hich rather m akes a
mockery of the term.” Colonial
families were living in a time of
high mortality rates where mar-
riages lasted about 12 years and
one-third to one-half of all chil-
dren lost a parent before they
turned 21. Middle-class Victorian
families depended on the labor
of the p oor and powerless t o keep
their lives running smoothly.
When politicians hark back to an
era of better (male-led) families
and marriages, it sure is tough to
know what they might be refer-
ring to.
It’s also important to highlight
that the family structures that
have historically been the most
communal or equal — the power-
ful community leadership of
women in some Native American
tribes or the centrality of Black
women in their extended-kin-
ship networks to name just two
examples — have also been the
ones actively broken or denigrat-
ed by those in power.
What I continue to turn over
in my mind is the degree to
which women are blamed for
almost every ill that befalls
marriage and children. In reali-
ty, as Coontz shows, the choices
that women have made are
typically not the cause of but in
reaction to r eal economic, polit-
ical and social change. Women’s
increasing entrance into the
workplace in the 1950 s — before
the rise of feminism — is just
one example. “Government pol-
icy encouraged the expansion
of married women’s employ-
ment, not because the govern-
ment was dominated by liberals
or feminists, but out of a desire
to foster industrial expansion
— as well as a cold war fear that
the Russians would win educa-
tional a nd technological superi-
ority if Americans did not use
their ‘woman power’ more effec-
tively.”
When it comes to parenting, I
know I am not the only woman
who has felt enraged or devas-
tated by “research-based” head-institutions at bridal or baby
showers, but I’m pretty sure
that’s my destiny now.
All this to say, Coontz is a
historian, not a self-help guru.
Her book isn’t a light read nor
full of save-your-marriage
“hacks.” Instead, “The Way We
Never Were” is deeply re-
searched and packed with evi-
dence-based zingers. It’s un-
likely that Coontz’s insights will
be quoted in scripty type on
chalkboards or on Instagram,
but they’ll certainly get your
attention: “The hybrid idea that
a woman can be fully absorbed
with her youngsters while si-
multaneously maintaining pas-
sionate sexual excitement with
her husband was a 1950s inven-
tion that drove thousands of
women to therapists, tranquil-
izers, or alcohol when they
actually tried to live up to it.”
Okay!
At several points I wondered:
If I had read this book before I
got married, would I have ap-
proached marriage and raising a
family differently or at least
framed my expectations in a
more forgiving and empathetic
way? I, at the very least, would
have placed my struggles, wor-
ries and assumptions in a much
larger context. That’s what his-
tory helps us do.
Coontz methodically takes
apart cherished myths — the
saintly mother, a man’s home as
his castle, the supermom — that
I didn’t realize I had internal-
ized. My marriage was never
strictly “traditional.” For exam-
ple, I always earned more mon-
ey than my husband, and we
shared household labor and
parenting duties. But I think if I
had understood the truth be-
hind these tropes, I would have
felt less bad about all the ways I
had never been a “typical” wife
or the “right kind” of mother.
More than anything, this book
made me see how fundamentally
flawed my expectations for my
marriage had always been. It’s
sad to me, actually, to think
about how I could have relieved
some of the pressure if I had
reframed my marriage as just
one relationship in my life in-
stead of the only or primary
adult relationship. I know now
that expecting any one relation-
ship to fulfill every emotional,
sexual, social and spiritual need
is — to use a technical term —
nuts.
I’m not saying that my mar-
BOOK WORLD FROM C1
Stephanie Coontz’s
marital must-read
Harry Stylessettles for acomfy abodeCHARLES SYKES/INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESSHarry Styles meets with fans after performing on
NBC’s “Today” at Rockefeller Plaza in New York
on Thursday, a day ahead of the release of his new
COLUMBIA RECORDS/ASSOCIATED PRESS album, “Harry’s House,” at left.THE WAY WE
NEVER WERE
American
Families and
the Nostalgia
Trap
By Stephanie
Coontz
Basic. 57 6 pp.
Paperback,
$22.99