Unless you're getting it from Vanilla Ice, unsolicited advice is the worst—as Jezebel aptly put it, "this type of help can be passive aggressive and often serves the person offering more than it does the person receiving." And yet, that hasn't stopped plenty of people (and magazines) from making a living doing so. Today, the Wall Street Journal published a piece by one such adviser—and in it, "Machiavelli Mom" does everything she can to unseat "Tiger Mom" as the world's most irritating unsolicited mom advice-giver.
Author Suzanne Evans, who is the author of the forthcoming "Machiavelli for Moms: Maxims on the Effective Governance of Children," said she was inspired by several maxims from Machiavelli's "The Prince" to use duplicity, deceit and ruthless cunning to parent her four children (and her husband).
That includes pitting two of her kids against each other for better grades (the loser got nothing "other than the shame of losing the competition—to his younger sister no less, as I reminded him"), lying to her kids about going on vacations without them ("Don't feel guilty for lying to your kids if it makes you happy and relaxed…because having a happy, relaxed mom always benefits a child"), disciplining her special-needs child with harsh punishments, and uh, forcing her husband to get a vasectomy in this creepy scene:
Either way, the maxim came in handy one night when my husband got into bed, pulled close to me and said, "You know, I'd really like to have another kid." To which I replied, "That's nice, honey, but what you're going to have instead is a vasectomy."
And how did she force him to do it? "My husband resisted this edict at first, but when I told him that until he accepted it he shouldn't expect any affection in bed, he quickly agreed to an appointment with a doctor." As NY Times editor Patrick LaForge put it, "She is either brilliantly cynical or barking mad." Or as Paul Ford tweeted, "Look out TIGER MOMS now it's MACHIAVELLI MOMS to make you want to RIP YOUR GODDAM FACE OFF from EXHAUSTED HORROR."
It sounds like Evans had an exhausting home life, and did what she needed to do to bring some semblance of order to it, even if it meant being a bit harsher to her children than other parents would approve of. But it also seems like all that "power" went to her head rather quickly, curdling into the hubris that led her to write a creepy book instructing others about how to be more like her—and if a husband or two gets a little emasculated along the way, or if a child is taught that shame is an acceptable state of mind, so be it.
At the same time...at least she didn't fat shame her 7-year-old daughter in a national magazine!
