The Radical Housewife

The Radical Housewife: Redefining Family Values for the 21st Century by Shannon Drury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since the birth of child number two, I've tried to read while nursing. It makes me feel like I'm getting a little time to myself, as if I'm learning something, and when I'd rather sleep in the middle of the night a good title will get my energized enough not to slump over into a puddle. I hate to relegate this title to only be reading while nursing, but I certainly am glad I picked this up to read.  For me, it was the right book at the right time.

I've read many a biography of famous and/or interesting people, and most of the time I come away thinking, "But they had it so easy!" or "But I don't have a deadly disease to bring me that perspective!" This strength of this book, however, is that it is about as normal as a person you can imagine - juggling children! - but who still managed to become president of Minnesota NOW. It was inspiring to read why she decided to get involved, useful to understand how motherhood - and postpartum depression - impacted her ability to navigate through the things she wanted to do, and wonderful that she was such a down-to-earth person who wrote about the good, bad and ugly of putting oneself out there. Reading this book made me think I could walk her path, which is more useful to me that consulting stories of people whose lives I feel I could never lead.

One other thing: I loved that this book considered moms as feminists without hiding that she is married with children. There are few things that can make one more aware of poverty, inequality of opportunity, the downsides of insurance, or just how crappy life can be than becoming a parent. Sure, life is unfair.  But for some kids and families it is much tougher than others.  Many feminist blogs, however, are a complete turnoff for me - they are meant for college girls who have time to march, or fight only the abortion fight, or who blog endlessly about girl's toys or body image.  It's not that this isn't important, but there's a whole world of unfairness to explore, and many of these issues are far more complicated than the color of kids' toys.  This book was the first feminist book I've read about a woman happily married with kids at home who did not mention breast-versus-bottle, attachment parenting, or any other parenting issues that seem to dominate most other books these days.  This is a woman with other things on her mind, and for that I applaud her and her dedication to getting her thoughts down on the page.


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