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Studies in Continuing Education

ISSN: 0158-037X (Print) 1470-126X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csce20

Public pedagogy from the learner's perspective:


women reading self-help relationship books

Brandi M. Kapell & Scott McLean

To cite this article: Brandi M. Kapell & Scott McLean (2014) Public pedagogy from the learner's
perspective: women reading self-help relationship books, Studies in Continuing Education, 36:3,
342-357, DOI: 10.1080/0158037X.2014.916262

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2014.916262

Published online: 20 May 2014.

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Download by: [Universidad Nacional Colombia], [Helena Sutachan] Date: 21 August 2017, At: 20:44
Studies in Continuing Education, 2014
Vol. 36, No. 3, 342–357, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2014.916262

Public pedagogy from the learner’s perspective: women reading


self-help relationship books
Brandi M. Kapell* and Scott McLean
Downloaded by [Universidad Nacional Colombia], [Helena Sutachan] at 20:44 21 August 2017

Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada


(Received 27 February 2014; final version received 14 April 2014)

In recent years, the concept of public pedagogy has increasingly influenced the study
of continuing education, drawing attention to ways in which adults access resources
from popular culture and learn without the involvement of educational institutions.
Reading relationship self-help books has become a prominent component of popular
culture. There are two predominant scholarly interpretations of relationship books for
women. One argues that such books have ‘abducted’ feminism, because, while cloaked
in egalitarian rhetoric about relationships between men and women, they actually
encourage women to adopt characteristically male approaches to relationships. The
other claims that such books are ‘anti-feminist,’ because they encourage women to
nurture satisfying relationships by adopting traditional feminine roles. We explore
these interpretations through reporting the results of twenty-four qualitative interviews.
Only a minority of readers reported experiences consistent with existing interpretations
of the genre. Most readers displayed complex combinations of learning experiences –
some of which were consistent with feminist principles, while others reflected a subtle
normalization of gender inequalities. We conclude that understanding the impact of
self-help books, among other forms of public pedagogy, requires moving beyond
textual analysis, to engaging readers in conversation about how reading has influenced
their sense of themselves and their relationships.
Keywords: public pedagogy; self-help; gender; popular culture

Introduction
Women have read self-help books for generations. Ehrenreich and English (2005)
reviewed two centuries of self-help and related literature, and narrated a history of the
means through which women’s thoughts and actions became increasingly subject to
control by experts in male-dominated fields such as medicine, psychology, and education.
Levitt (2002) wrote a genealogy of domestic advice for women, tracing a cultural history
spanning ‘from Catherine Beecher to Martha Stewart.’ In recent decades, readership of
self-help books has expanded dramatically, with some researchers estimating that half of
all Americans have purchased a self-help book (McGee 2005, 11). As Simonds (1992)
and Rapping (1996) have argued, the explosion of self-help reading has been largely due
to female readers, and relates to diverse socioeconomic and cultural changes women have
experienced in recent decades.
Within the wide range of publications marketed to help people change or improve
some aspect of their personal or professional lives, books about interpersonal

*Corresponding author. Email: bkapell@ucalgary.ca


© 2014 Taylor & Francis
Studies in Continuing Education 343

relationships have established a substantial niche. Hundreds of books have been written
to provide advice about how to achieve better, healthier, more satisfying, more
sustainable, and more enjoyable relationships. Millions of readers have turned to such
books in the context of relationships with spouses, lovers, friends, family members, and
co-workers. Authors, publishers, and scholars have long recognized that self-help reading
about relationships is a highly gendered activity, with books, marketing campaigns, and
research oriented primarily toward female readers.
There are two prevailing interpretations of self-help books about relationships. One
portrays self-help relationship books as ‘the abduction of feminism’ (Hochschild 1994),
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because such books, while cloaked in egalitarian rhetoric about relationships between
men and women, actually encourage women to adopt characteristically male self-
understandings and male approaches to relationships. The other interpretation portrays
self-help relationship books as ‘anti-feminist’ (Murphy 2001), because such books
encourage women to nurture satisfying relationships by adopting traditional feminine
roles. In this article, we explore such claims by sharing the results of twenty-four
qualitative interviews with female readers of self-help books about relationships. Rather
than interpret the structure or meaning of various self-help texts, we spoke with women
about why and how they read such texts, what they believe they learned from such
reading, and whether and how such learning caused them to change their thoughts or
actions.
The study of women reading self-help books about relationships contributes to
broader scholarship in the domain of public pedagogy (Sandlin, O’Malley, and Burdick
2011; Wright and Sandlin 2009a). The Handbook of Public Pedagogy (Sandlin, Schultz,
and Burdick 2010) includes chapters on television, cinema, museums, video games,
social media, blogs, festivals, performance art, graffiti, hip-hop music, parades, and
knitting clubs. Scholars of continuing education have produced notable studies of
learning through activities including reading popular fiction (Jarvis 1999, 2012),
shopping (Jubas 2011; Sandlin 2010), traveling (Van Winkle and Lagay 2012), and
watching television (Jarvis 2005; Jubas and Knutson 2012, 2013; Wright 2007; Wright
and Sandlin 2009b). Our work both expands such scholarship to include one of the most
explicitly pedagogical realms of popular culture, and deepens the field by offering
detailed qualitative research about what the experience of public pedagogy looks like
from the perspective of the learner.
Our findings make two key contributions to the understanding of public pedagogy.
First, we offer a rich empirical portrait of the reflections of women engaged in self-help
reading about interpersonal relationships. This is surprisingly rare in a field of study
dominated to date by research methods focused on textual analysis rather than upon the
meanings actually ascribed by women to such texts. Second, our research exemplifies the
importance, identified in the works cited above by Wright, Sandlin, Jarvis, and Jubas, of
engaging actual learners in the study of the impact of public pedagogy. We argue that,
while feminist principles may sometimes be abducted or opposed by the structure of self-
help texts, women themselves make meaning and take action in ways that cannot be
predicted by such structural readings. As scholars of ‘reception studies’ in other domains
have demonstrated (Childress and Friedkin 2012; Griswold 1993; Machor and Goldstein
2001; Long 1986; Radway 1984), we cannot understand the social impact of the
consumption of the products of popular culture simply by interpreting the messages of
those products. Rather, we must explore how such messages are actually adopted,
344 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

embraced, resisted, or adapted by people as they engage with them from the foundation of
their diverse, preexisting patterns of thought and action.

Literature review
The abduction of feminism thesis was developed by Hochschild (1994) on the basis of
her textual analysis of bestselling advice books for women published between 1970 and
1990. She argued that there had been a paradoxical ‘cooling’ in the nature of advice
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provided to women about the management of their intimate lives:

Earlier advice books are far more patriarchal, less based on open and equal communication,
but oddly, they often reflect more ‘warmth.’ More recent advice books call for more open
and more equal communication, but they propose ‘cooler’ emotional strategies with which to
engage those equal bonds. From the vantage point of the early feminist movement, modern
advice books reaffirm one ideal (equality) but undermine another (the development of
emotionally rich social bonds). (3)

Hochschild argued that, by 1990 self-help relationship books had come to represent ‘a
shift in the cultural premises about human attachment’ (3). She used the image of the
‘postmodern cowgirl’ (10) to illustrate the characteristics represented as virtuous by most
authors of self-help books for women: possessing few emotional needs; being self-reliant,
and independent from other human beings; investing in oneself rather than one’s
relationships; distrusting others; and following stereotypically male emotional rules with
respect to intimate relationships. Hochschild wrote: ‘The postmodern cowgirl has sculpted
herself to adjust to a paradigm of distrust. She devotes herself to the ascetic practices of
emotional control, and expects to give and receive surprisingly little love from other human
beings’ (11). Hochschild (19) concluded with the observation that relationship advice
books were likely ‘useful’ for women given contemporary social conditions, but did
nothing to help them transform those social conditions into better ones.
The argument that self-help books encourage women to understand themselves in
highly individualized terms, and to distance themselves emotionally from those with
whom they might have relationships, was furthered by Hazleden’s (2004) analysis of
fourteen bestselling relationship manuals published between 1981 and 2000. Hazleden
argued that the bestselling relationship manuals from that era encouraged readers to
detach themselves from intimate relationships, and seek fulfillment through self-
sufficiency. She characterized the advice from self-help books as prescribing relationships
which lack strong emotional bonds or efforts to ‘help’ one’s partner, and which could be
terminated at any time if the self-sufficiency of either partner was compromised.
Hazleden’s (215) portrait of the idealized reader of such books recalls Hochschild’s
postmodern cowgirl:

The reader of the self-help text is typically brought to recognise herself as having a new
identity (as an addict, or as codependent, for example) and she is thereby provided with a
new responsibility to be focused not on others but on herself; an obligation thus being born
in her to practise self-mastery, to become self-determined, autonomous and self-sufficient.
This in itself is a social obligation, as she must practice these values both for her own sake,
and that of her partner – because it is the ‘right’ thing to do. Nonetheless, she will be utterly
isolated, cast adrift in a loveless world, in which the pair relationship is bereft of compassion,
mutuality, self-sacrifice and commitment, and has thus been emptied of much of its ethical
significance.
Studies in Continuing Education 345

Hazleden (2004, 211) asserted that self-help books about relationships are really about
one’s relationship with oneself: ‘The books assume a self that has been “lost” or
“damaged” and they prescribe a program of examining, interrogating, nurturing, and
loving the self in order to develop a self-sufficient and autonomous self that is “whole”
and “healthy”’. Thus, relationship manuals promote autonomous ideals of selfhood and a
distancing between oneself and others.
While the abduction of feminism thesis argues that self-help relationship books
promote gender equality but discourage the formation of emotional bonds between
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human beings, other authors argue that such books are altogether incompatible with
feminist theory, politics, and ethics. Zimmerman, Holm, and Starrels (2001) analyzed the
content of the top 11 relationship self-help books on the New York Times Bestseller List
from 1988 to 1998, to explore whether such books were compatible with feminist
approaches to marital and family therapy. They assessed the degree to which each book:
recognized the social construction of gender; promoted egalitarian relationships between
couples; empowered women to explore non-traditional behaviors; and encouraged non-
hierarchical relationships between men and women. They found that roughly one-third of
the books reviewed were consistent with feminism, one-third were incompatible with
feminism, and one-third were consistent with feminism on certain dimensions but not on
others (172). They concluded that the most popular self-help books were more likely to
be non-feminist than feminist in orientation, and that the most popular books were
becoming less feminist over time (173).
At about the same time as Zimmerman, Holm, and Starrels published their feminist
analysis of bestselling self-help relationships books, three other articles were published
that were highly critical of the anti-feminist nature of the popular ‘Mars and Venus’ series
of books by John Gray. Cowlishaw (2002) argued that Men are from Mars, Women are
from Venus promoted a ‘subject-object binary’ in conceptualizing the relationships
between men and women: ‘Men sustain their role as actor, and women continue to be
acted upon’ (181). In their analysis of the same book, Zimmerman, Haddock, and
McGeorge (2001, 55) lamented: ‘Unfortunately, for a book with such immense influence,
much of the material is potentially detrimental to its readers and to their intimate
relationships.’ They argued:

Gray promotes power differentials by providing stereotypic descriptions of men and


women, by assuming and encouraging traditional divisions of labour, by placing respons-
ibility for change and relationship quality primarily on female partners, by recommending
that male partners’ needs and abilities are prioritized in relationships, and by implying threats
of male violence or dire consequences of certain female behaviors that challenge male
privilege. (64)

The authors concluded that marital and family therapists should ‘assist clients in
recognizing the ways in which the book reinforces gender-based power differentials’ (67)
and help their clients to understand that research actually supports the contention that
marital satisfaction and personal well-being are enhanced by more egalitarian relation-
ships between partners.
Murphy (2001) linked a critique of the works of John Gray with the following
characterization of self-help books in general:
346 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

Disturbingly, much of the rhetoric to be found ensconced upon the self-help shelf is strongly
anti-feminist: it reifies constructions of gender that second-wave feminism fought against, it
continues the misogynist practice of making women responsible – and to blame – for any
perceived flaw in domestic arrangements and it endorses a capitalist ideology about the
power and centrality of the individual. (159)

Murphy argued that ‘very traditional and restrictive notions of gender and sexual
relationships underpin the content of Gray’s books’ and that this illustrates ‘how
relationship-focused self-help can be antithetical to some of the primary tenets of second-
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wave feminism: primarily the aspiration for equality between the sexes, both within the
home and workforce’ (159).
Whether self-help relationship books have abducted feminism or opposed it is an
empirical question. There are likely some books which could be characterized as anti-
feminist, some that could be characterized as having embraced feminism’s commitment to
equality while derailing its commitment to emotionally-rich and mutually supportive
human relationships, and some that are inconsistent with either of these characterizations.
What every study cited in this literature review holds in common, however, is the absence
of empirical research with readers of self-help books; these researchers did not actually
engage with women who had read self-help books in order to explore the validity of their
portrayal of self-help books and their putative impact on women’s lives. Overall, there
has been a remarkable absence of empirical research in the domain of women reading
self-help books about relationships. We could not find a single scholarly article published
in the past twenty years that focused on the experience or outcomes of women reading
self-help books about relationships.
In an older study, Grodin (1991) provided some insight into the reading of self-help
books based on interviews she conducted with eleven American women. Her research
questioned whether or not the structure of self-help texts can reliably predict the
meanings attributed to those texts by readers. She reported that ‘nearly all of those I
interviewed voiced frustration, sometimes in strong terms, with the model of relationships
they felt was being forwarded by most self-help books’ (413). She noted that many
readers in her study perceived and rejected the message from self-help books that ‘taking
responsibility for one’s own life means putting in more than one’s share of work in
personal relationships because men cannot be expected to do so’ (414). Grodin’s research
with female readers of self-help books demonstrates that such readers bring critical and
creative perspectives to their reading. Rather than simply digesting the messages offered
by self-help authors, readers selectively adopt ideas, rejecting some, adapting others, and
applying all of them to their personal contexts within preexisting and diverse interpretive
frameworks.
Our literature review has revealed a key debate and a crucial shortcoming in existing
scholarly literature about self-help relationship books. The debate is focused on the
question: Do self-help relationship books abduct feminism (embracing an egalitarian
ethos while alienating human beings from one another) or oppose it (supporting
patriarchal inequalities of power and esteem)? The shortcoming is that this debate has
been conducted in the absence of empirical research with women who read self-help
relationship books. As such, while we know a fair amount about the content of self-help
texts, we know very little about the experience of self-help reading. We now turn to a
brief explanation of the methods we used to bridge the gap between deconstructing the
Studies in Continuing Education 347

meaning of self-help texts, and understanding the empirical experience of self-help


reading.

Research methods and participants


Our analysis of women who read self-help books on relationships is part of a larger
research project (McLean 2013, 2014; McLean and Vermeylen 2014; Vermeylen and
McLean 2014). In 2012, we conducted interviews with 134 adults who had read a self-
help book, in the areas of career success, interpersonal relationships, or health and well-
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being, over the course of the previous year. Interviewees were recruited primarily through
online advertisements placed in the ‘books’ sections of Kijiji websites for Calgary,
Vancouver, Edmonton, and Winnipeg. Most participants were Canadian, although
fourteen were American and three were British. We did not engage in systematic or
random sampling procedures. Therefore, our interviewees do not represent the full range
of readers of self-help books, and our findings cannot be generalized to the broader
population of such readers.
Qualitative interviews were conducted via online chat software, Skype calls, and the
exchange of email messages. The interviews were organized in five main sections:
motivation; learning goals; learning strategies; learning outcomes; and impact. Questions
were open-ended, encouraging participants to share their experience of self-help reading
in their own words and with minimal direction. Interviews were transcribed verbatim or
cut and pasted from chat software or email messages. Participants completing interviews
received a C$25 honorarium, and are identified in this article by pseudonyms assigned by
our research team.
Of the 134 participants, two-thirds were women. Each interview focused on the
experience of reading one specific self-help book. Of our 134 participants, 66 (49%) read
books relating primarily to health and well-being, while 35 (26%) read books dealing
with interpersonal relationships, and 33 (25%) read books on topics focusing on career
and financial success. Women were more likely to read books pertaining to health and
well-being (54%) and relationships (29%), as opposed to those relating to careers (17%).
In contrast, men were more likely to read books pertaining to careers (40%) and health
(40%), as opposed to those relating to relationships (20%).
Within the group of readers whose reading focused on interpersonal relationships,
there were distinct gender differences. As predicted by existing scholarship, women were
far more likely to read books dealing with interpersonal relationships in general, and most
especially with intimate relationships. Of the nine men who read books dealing with
interpersonal relationships, seven had general goals relating to things such as improving
their communication skills or building their social networks. Of the 45 male readers in
our study, just one had a goal of improving a relationship with his child, and just one had
a goal of improving a relationship with his spouse. In contrast, of the 89 women in our
study, 16 had reading goals relating to enhancing a relationship with a spouse or other
intimate partner, while five hoped to improve relationships with other family members,
and five had general relationship goals such as understanding other people.
Of the 26 women in our study who had read books dealing with interpersonal
relationships, we removed from our current analysis two readers of books dealing with
the parenting of young children. Of the 24 women whose self-help reading is analyzed in
the subsequent sections of this article, the majority were well educated, with 75% having
attained at least a degree or diploma from a post-secondary institution. These 24 women
348 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

ranged in age from 20 to 58 years, and nearly half of them were in their twenties. The
women earned a living through a variety of activities, with the most common field of paid
employment being in the domain of education, health, and social or government services.
A total of eight women were employed as teachers, health-care workers, social workers,
and government service employees. Three women identified themselves as homemakers,
three as graduate students, two as entrepreneurs, two as accountants, two as flight
attendants, and one each as a realtor, creative writer, urban planner, and as unemployed at
the time of the interview.
The 24 women in our study read 21 different books about relationships. Sixteen
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women read books pertaining to intimate relationships with male partners, three women
read books about mother–daughter relationships, and five women self-help books about
issues or skills which could be applied to a wide range of relationships. In the next
section of this article, we explore the learning goals and outcomes that these women
associated with their reading, and we assess the degree to which such goals and outcomes
are consistent with the interpretation of self-help relationship books as either being anti-
feminist or co-opting feminism.

Findings
The textual analysis of self-help relationship books has led to rather neat and tidy
interpretations of the genre. Such books are either seen to be anti-feminist in their
promotion of traditional female roles and responsibilities, or to have abducted the
egalitarian ethos of feminism while promoting interpersonal relationships bereft of
emotional warmth and mutual support. Our research with readers of self-help relationship
books reveals a story which is anything but neat and tidy. We found that a strong majority
of our readers entered the reading process seeking more ‘warmth’ in their interpersonal
relationships, but that they did not necessarily come away from their reading embracing
patriarchal values or expressing commitment to conventional female roles. We found
women to be very active readers, capable of rejecting advice with which they disagreed or
which they found ill-suited to their circumstances. We found women to be complex
consumers of self-help authors’ messages – sometimes embracing anti-feminist ideas and
sometimes rejecting them. We present the messy realities of our readers’ encounters with
self-help relationship books in two basic stages. The first demonstrates the rarity of
‘postmodern cowgirl’ attributes amongst our readers, while the second shows how those
readers defy simplistic interpretations of their reading.

Warm motivations
A strong majority of women in our study read a self-help book in order to strengthen or
foster connections with others. They discussed motivations such as wanting to understand
a relationship better, to ensure a successful and lasting relationship, to improve a
relationship, or to simply be more open to the possibility of love. They came to these
books hoping to cultivate more love, compassion, trust, care, support, understanding,
intimacy, togetherness, and community in their lives through relations with intimate
partners, family members, and friends.
The most common learning goals of these women centered on wanting to strengthen
their intimate relationships. Reflections on how a self-help book might aid them in this
goal varied from woman to woman. For Melanie, a 34-year-old accountant, this meant
just being open to what the book had to offer:
Studies in Continuing Education 349

I started to read this book with a completely open mind in order to take away as much as
possible and be able to make small positive changes to my marriage relationship (not that
there was anything wrong in my marriage, but there is always room for positive
improvements).

Marci, a 58-year-old emergency medical technician, wanted to learn about communica-


tion as a way to strengthen her relationship with her partner. She said: ‘I wanted to learn
to “listen” and interpret guy-speak, to communicate more effectively, thereby reducing
the incidence of misunderstandings.’
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Some women read self-help relationship books hoping to ensure the longevity,
intimacy, and overall well-being of their relationships. Sidra, a 22-year-old entrepreneur,
told us: ‘I’ve begun dating a new man and our relationship is going very well, but I
wanted to preemptively ensure its success by making sure that I don’t fall in line with
common missteps…I wanted to make sure to the best of my ability that this one would
work.’ Maelle, a 31-year-old graduate student, read And Baby Makes Three by John and
Julie Gottman so that she and her husband could learn strategies for maintaining romance
and intimacy in their relationship given their plans to have a baby in the near future.
Some readers approached self-help books as a way to more fully understand people in
both romantic and platonic relationships. Bronwyn, a 30-year-old health-care worker,
stated that she read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman with the goal of trying
to understand her partner more. Sioban, a 28-year-old homemaker, read Personality Plus
by Florence Littauer with the hope ‘to understand people better and why they behave the
way they do.’
A few women turned to reading a relationship self-help book to aid them in getting
over a past relationship or to help them get through the pain of a breakup. Interestingly,
within these narratives the women discussed not only wanting to heal themselves from
the breakup, but also to learn from this experience in order to facilitate success in a future
relationship. Twenty-two-year-old Audrey, read Dump That Chump by Debra Mandel and
stated:

I was hoping to learn how to get over past relationships with partners that haven’t been right
for me, whether it was sexual or spiritual. I wanted to know how to be more of a strong
person and a stronger partner in relationships.

Romantic relationships were the focus for most interviews. However, some read
relationship self-help books to aid in general relationships, foster community, or simply
to make friends. Sandra, 29-year-old social worker, belonged to a church group and felt
that the group was losing its sense of community. This led her to read The Different Drum
by M. Scott Peck because she ‘was looking for some information to help [her] understand
[her] feelings of lack of community and look for ideas to foster the community [they]
once had.’ As someone focusing on general relationship skills, Clara, a 32-year-old
accountant, said that she hoped to learn ways to develop relationships with people after
she had moved to Canada from Europe, ‘especially when meeting them for the first time.’
Not all readers in our study expressed ‘warm’ goals when reflecting on why they
chose to read a relationship self-help book. Three women discussed ‘cool’ motivations
and learning goals, such as distancing themselves from loved ones, setting boundaries,
managing emotions, and not fixing a ‘faulty’ relationship but instead learning to deal with
350 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

it. All three of these women discussed their relationship with their mothers, and two even
read the same book: Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic
Mothers by Karyl McBride. Nicole, a 47-year-old woman, explained her motivation and
learning goals for reading this book:

I think if anything was a goal, it was to find a way to free myself of feeling guilty about how
I often feel about my mom, to validate how I feel, and to forgive the things about her that
make me crazy. Because when I feel angry or mad at her for things, it is quickly followed by
guilt of how I feel towards her, because ‘she’s my mom.’
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Victoria, a 49-year-old who works as a flight attendant, explained how her motivations
were more centered on distancing herself from her mother and ‘not engaging in her
“woe” is me behavior, like not letting her run my life.’ Similarly, Galina, a 29-year-old
social worker, discussed wanting to distance herself from certain people in her life
through the creation of boundaries:

I wanted to learn about boundaries. I wanted to learn what unhealthy boundaries were, and
what healthy boundaries were… I let my mom and other family members walk all over me. I
let them come over unannounced, let them do whatever, whenever in our house. I almost
never said no to them. I also tried never to upset them, so I was also responsible for tending
to their feelings.

It is clear to see that most of these women turned to reading a self-help book on
relationships because they wanted to establish deeper and more meaningful connections.
They felt motivated as readers because of the hope to strengthen, foster, or create
relationships. In most cases, their narratives gave the impression that nothing was
particularly ‘wrong’ in their relationships, but that they were hoping to make
improvements. In addition to Nicole, Victoria, and Galina, two other women’s
experiences departed from this pattern. Danica was having an affair and Bronwyn had
issues in her relationship that she attributed to her depression. They read self-help books
hoping to better understand their issues and alleviate problems in their relationships.
The majority of women in our study could not be characterized as postmodern
cowgirls, expecting to give and receive little emotional warmth in their lives. Rather,
most of our readers expressed a desire to enhance their connections with other human
beings. Does this mean that the abduction of feminism through self-help books has given
way to an anti-feminist commitment to traditional gender roles? One could argue that the
act of reading such books constitutes, on its own, allegiance to stereotypes of femininity
in which women are responsible for the maintenance and quality of interpersonal
relationships. The motivations expressed by Melanie (‘to make small positive changes to
my marriage’), Marci (‘to learn to … interpret guy-speak’), and Sidra (‘making sure I
don’t fall in line with common missteps’) do appear consistent with the feminist critique
of self-help books as normalizing women’s responsibility for nurturing intimate relation-
ships with men. It is fascinating that the three readers in our study who expressed the
wish to stop being so responsible for nurturing positive interpersonal relationships all did
so in the context of their relationships with their mothers. In order to explore whether
women who read books in order to enhance their social relationships are internalizing
messages antithetical to feminism, or are simply endeavoring to construct emotionally
rich and mutually supportive social bonds, we now turn to the analysis of what our
Studies in Continuing Education 351

readers claimed to have learned through their engagement with self-help relationship
books.

Active and complex readers


While actively seeking warm emotional connections in their lives, the majority of our
readers did not conform to simplistic characterizations of women as embracing traditional
gender stereotypes. Several examples illustrate the complexity of the relationships
between self-help readers and the texts with which they engage. Audrey read Dump That
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Chump as a way to deal with a recent breakup. However, she stated that the advice given
was actually far too ‘cool’ and that if she applied such advice to her life, then others
would perceive her as arrogant and self-centered:

The book taught to be dominant in all situations in a relationship, but in my experience that
is not the best way to go. I believe that there has to be room for compromise in every loving
relationship and that being a diva really isn’t the way to go. Although I did want to become
stronger in a relationship, I did not need to be right at all costs, which was what the book
encouraged. Rather than showing me what I should be, I think it has shown me what I in fact
should not be.

Audrey’s account indicates that the advice in Dump that Chump is in line with the
abduction of feminism analysis. The book appears to give advice to follow stereotypically
male emotional rules. Interestingly though, Audrey rejected that advice. Audrey’s goal in
reading this book was to learn better ways to ensure future relationship success. She leads
an independent life, supporting herself as a baker and entrepreneur, and is learning how to
be content with herself outside of a relationship. She explained: ‘Right now, I just want to
figure out what I really want and who I really am before chasing after every guy who
shows interest in me.’ Audrey’s self-help reading narrative illustrates clearly both that
reading emotionally cool self-help books does not lead one to become a postmodern
cowgirl, and that embracing a wish for emotionally warm interpersonal relationships does
not lead one to surrender to traditional gender stereotypes.
Nicole, Galina and Victoria provide further examples of the complex and active role
of the reader in the process of self-help reading. Nicole’s reading of Will I Ever Be Good
Enough led her to change the way she communicates with her mother. She gave the
example of how she manages telephone conversations with her mother:

When I’m talking to her on the phone, the minute the conversation turns to being all about
her (which usually takes 30 seconds or less), I tune out and say ‘thanks for calling’ and pretty
much end the call, where I used to just tough it out and listen to all the things she would tell
me about her.

This approach to distancing herself from her mother contrasts with what Nicole claims to
have also learned about ways of parenting her own children:

I will carry lessons from the book with me for life, as I never want my kids to perceive me
the way I view her. Something as minor as how I listen to them. I am aware of making sure
they get my undivided attention so they KNOW I am interested in listening and hearing what
they have to say. I never want my kids to feel I control them the way she has always
controlled me.
352 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

Victoria also distanced herself from her mother by changing her patterns of conversation.
Yet, like Nicole, Victoria also reflected on how the book changed the way she parents her
own children: ‘I will always try to listen to my kids and remember that they are perfect
just the way they are, each being unique. And I tell them I love them all the time.’ In
similar fashion, Galina, distanced herself from her mother and sister, and found that her
relationship with her partner was strengthened as a result:

My relationship with my mom and family is more strained at this point. My mom is avoiding
me a little more and tries to avoid certain topics – those topics that she knows I will assert my
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boundaries in regard to. My sister is more frustrated and angry at me and over the things I
say, but her behavior has changed. I have stood my ground with her and she has become
more respectful of my boundaries. On the positive side, my relationship with my husband
has improved greatly. We are communicating much better, spending more quality time
together and are closer to one another. It appears that creating some healthy distance with my
family has allowed there to be space for my husband to get closer to me.

These quotes highlight how Nicole’s, Victoria’s, and Galina’s experience of reading can
be seen as reflecting both warmth and cooling. They have distanced themselves from
certain family members, but at the same time expressed a commitment to the importance
of their own parenthood and marriage. More broadly, across many interviews, our readers
discussed applying some self-help authors’ ideas to their lives, while ignoring or
disagreeing with others.
We found that some women turned to self-help reading for reasons which were
distinctively non-traditional in terms of gender stereotypes. Some women were looking to
be happier in their relationships, to stand up for themselves, or to take control of their
emotions and relationships. Danica, a 45-year-old woman who was unemployed at the
time of the interview, explained her motivation for reading:

I was hoping to understand what compelled me to be the kind of person that had an affair. I
was hoping to learn how to decide what to do with my life from then on. That there would be
some solid tools to help me figure out whether I could end the affair, whether I should tell
my spouse about it, whether I should split from my spouse. Mostly I just wanted to try and
get a straight understanding of why I was doing what I was doing.

Danica would appear to have embraced some of the characteristics of the postmodern
cowgirl. She was engaged in an extramarital affair, distanced herself from her husband,
and distanced herself from her own emotions. In the end, self-help reading influenced
Danica’s decision to end the affair and renew her relationship with her husband.
Robin, a 37-year-old, health-care worker, reflected on her reading of The Ultimate
Guide to Sex and Disability. She had been in a car accident, leaving her with a chronic
disability, and thought that this book could help her and her husband’s sex life. Choosing
to read this book was based on her own motivation to improve her situation. In a similar
manner, Anna, a 45-year-old teacher, read a book to improve her and her husband’s sex
life. She stated ‘I was absolutely naive when it comes to sex. I would just wait and wait
for him even if I want it. I am so shy but after reading the book I opened up and
confidently lead my partner to what pleases him and me. My spouse and I became closer
to each other.’ Discussing, being open about, wanting, practicing, and refining sexual
practices is customarily not in line with traditional female roles. Regardless, Robin and
Studies in Continuing Education 353

Anna took the initiative to improve their sex lives, and therefore, their relationships with
their partners. Robin’s, Anna’s, and Danica’s experiences of self-help reading could not
be understood through straightforward assertions about opposing or co-opting feminism.
Their stories suggest a far more complex process of sometimes embracing traditional
notions of femininity, and sometimes pushing back on such notions.
While the majority of our readers demonstrated complex blends of conformity and
resistance to traditional gender roles, some simply embraced them. Lana, a 29-year-old
homemaker, read The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Laura Schlessinger.
Lana said:
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I try to exude more confidence and trust in my marriage and I try to dress and look nice so
that I will always be appealing to my husband. I try to be more conscious of the way I
interact with my husband. I attempt to save the gossip for my girlfriends rather than bore him
with it and most importantly if he says he is ‘fine’ I don’t pester him like I used to because I
know he meant what he said.

Lana reported learning about the supposedly inherent differences between male and
female patterns of communication:

When a man says something that’s exactly what he means. Men don’t play ‘mind games’ the
way that women tend to and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but just that they’re not
trying to ‘say something else.’ For example: if a man says he’s ‘fine’ he really means that
he‘s ‘fine.’ Whereas if I women says she ‘fine’ she is probably really upset or angry.

Lana’s narrative shows that there are times when traditional gender messages in self-help
books do indeed correspond to readers’ reception of those books.
However, even in cases where women appear to have learned lessons consistent with
traditional gender stereotypes, they sometimes process those lessons in ways inconsistent
with the prevailing interpretation of self-help books. Melinda, a 34-year-old chartered
accountant with a management position in a publicly-traded company, read Love and
Respect because it was selected by another member of her book club. Melinda reported:

The main idea in the book is that women want to be loved and men want to be respected.
Respect is what up-lifts men. So, something simple such as my husband agreed to clean the
shower floor. He agreed to clean it, but there was no timeframe attached. So, instead of
cleaning it myself because I didn’t think he accomplished the task in the timeframe in which
I thought was appropriate, I left the task until he was able to do it and then thanked him for
doing the cleaning. All I need to do is remember that men want to be respected.

Melinda’s narrative is paradoxical. She expresses wanting to have a stronger relationship


with her husband and she read a self-help book that gives advice consistent with
traditional gender stereotypes. She asserts: ‘I want to be the best wife I can be. One my
husband is not only proud of, but one that makes him feel good, trusted, valued, and
respected.’
Melinda’s interpretation of the advice from Love and Respect seems void of the
warmth, love, and playfulness that Hochschild argued characterized the more patriarchal
texts of past decades. Instead, it is as though the book offered her stereotypical gender
advice, while also telling her to distance herself from her emotions. For Melinda, this
354 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

means not expressing her dissatisfaction with her husband’s lack of timely work around
the house. She told us:

I tried to think more before I spoke … how will my comments be received, are my comments
respectful, would my comments make me feel loved? It’s all about how we present ourselves
to our spouse. I needed to change my presentation.

If one concludes that men need to be respected and women need to be loved, does this
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advice actually give a woman tools to be better able to receive love? Or does it just give
traditional gender advice while promoting a rational, male-oriented approach to relation-
ships at the same time? Melinda stated: ‘men need to be respected. You can do this in
words and in actions. Small changes to yourself can make big changes to your spouse’s
feelings towards you.’ We see that Melinda is following traditional gender advice while
simultaneously ‘cooling’ her approach to her conjugal relationship. Thus, at times, self-
help readers may learn to be more traditional in their orientation to marital relationships,
while at the same time foregoing the emotional warmth that was supposed to traditionally
characterize such relationships.
Overall, the majority of the women we interviewed turned to reading self-help books
to enrich their interpersonal relationships. The majority of women in this analysis are well
educated women who are balancing the demands of work with those of maintaining and
fostering healthy relationships. As exemplified in the vignettes shared in this article, their
individual narratives highlight the messy realities of contemporary relationships, as well
as the complex political implications of the ways in which the women understand
themselves and their relationships. Relatively few of our readers could be assigned
straightforward labels: Lana and Melinda would appear to have embraced an anti-feminist
ethos regarding marital relationships, while Audrey would seem to have adopted an
egalitarian approach to dating, and Robin and Anna have taken a more empowered
approach to sexual intimacy. In many cases, our readers rejected explicitly anti-feminist
ideals, while embracing approaches to life which subtly reinforce structural inequities
between men and women. The most obvious ways through which our readers’ narratives
demonstrate the subtle normalization of gender differentials were in the embracement of
an intensive commitment to parenting (Nicole and Victoria), in the prioritization
of conjugal relationships over all others (Galina and Danica), and in the assumption of
primary responsibility for making intimate relationships work (Melanie, Marci, and
Sidra). While contemporary self-help readers do not conform to simplistic characteriza-
tions as either postmodern cowgirls or anti-feminists, they do tend to express under-
standings of themselves and their relationships consistent with conventional assumptions
about women and men. In short, self-help reading would appear to have enabled our
readers to pursue emotionally warm and reasonably egalitarian approaches to relation-
ships, but not to enable them to deconstruct the power differentials and political
implications of the reality that it is largely women who read such books in the quest for
better relationships.

Conclusion
To authoritatively describe and explain the impact of self-help relationship books on
women would require far more ambitious research than we undertook. One would need to
interview a larger number of readers, select interviewees in ways that would ensure they
Studies in Continuing Education 355

represented the broader population of readers, and engage in some form of longitudinal
contact to determine the longer-term impact of reading. However, this article has made
two key contributions to understanding this important domain of popular culture. First,
we have presented a rich, empirical portrait of women reading self-help relationship
books. In a field of study dominated by textual analysis, the engagement of actual readers
in qualitative research processes is an important breakthrough. Through our exploratory
research, we have portrayed the complexity and diversity of the process of reading self-
help relationship books.
Second, we have reinforced the importance, identified by scholars of public pedagogy
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including Sandlin, Wright, Jarvis, and Jubas, of transcending the authoritative interpreta-
tion of cultural messages by actually engaging with the learners who receive such
messages. We have shown that assumptions regarding the abduction of feminism and
opposition to feminism are not sufficient to describe or explain the actual experience of
women reading self-help books about relationships. While self-help texts may be
interpreted as having a particular structure or meaning, one cannot argue that the
experience of reading such texts produces outcomes in readers, which correspond to that
structure and meaning in a straightforward manner. Rather, readers tend to adopt or
embrace certain aspects of texts, while resisting or adapting others. According to the
experiences of the readers we interviewed, self-help reading does not consistently
produce postmodern cowgirls or pre-modern traditionalists, but it does tend to naturalize
or reproduce patterns of thought and action which are consistent with gendered divisions
of labor and power differentials.
The range of femininities promoted through self-help reading appears to be very
broad indeed. Several of the readers in our study reported learning or making changes in
their lives that would be reasonably consistent with feminist principles regarding
egalitarianism and mutually supportive social relationships. Others reported learning
that would reinforce traditional and hierarchical gender roles, or place further demands
upon women as bearing disproportionate responsibility for the quality of intimate
relationships. Overall, our research shows that truly understanding the impact of self-help
relationship books requires moving beyond the textual analysis of the books, to engaging
the readers of such books in conversation about how their reading has influenced their
sense of themselves and their relationships. Why women read self-help relationship
books, and what they learn from them, is far more complex than one might suppose from
previous critiques of the genre grounded in the interpretation of the books themselves.
For scholars of adult and continuing education, our research with women who read
self-help relationship books has two major implications. First, as we have argued more
fully in recent publications (McLean 2013, 2014; McLean and Vermeylen 2014;
Vermeylen and McLean 2014), self-help reading is an important and under-studied
domain of public pedagogy. Millions of adults each year read self-help books with
learning goals relating to career and financial success, interpersonal relationships, and
health and well-being. Many of these adult learners turn to self-help reading as an
alternative to either enrolling in more formal educational programs, or engaging directly
with health and human service professionals. Learning about the motivations and
experiences of self-help readers is important for continuing educators who wish to
understand the evolving nature of adult learners and the alternative pedagogical resources
now available to those learners.
Second, just as employing concepts relating to gender and feminism has enabled us to
better understand the experience of women reading self-help books, so could employing
356 B.M. Kapell and S. McLean

such concepts enable continuing educators to better understand the diversity and the
experiences of adult learners in a wide range of educational settings. We have found that
self-help reading produces and reproduces gendered patterns of identity, by simulta-
neously enabling and constraining the ways in which readers think about themselves and
their relationships with others. Such processes also take place across the gamut of settings
studied by adult and continuing educators, and we trust that our analysis in this paper
may assist such educators to problematize the social construction and reproduction of
gender in those settings.
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Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the research contributions of University of Calgary graduate
students Laurie Vermeylen and Jaya Dixit.

Funding
This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
[grant number 410-2011-0324].

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