All in all an intresting read, but could have been a little more concise. The three different types of interests Matchar focuses on (Crafts, Food, Parenting) get reduced more or less to the same origins, so those three chapters feel very repetitive. However, I found it an interesting insight into that aspect of American culture. ( )

3.5. Chock-full of interesting information (as I teach myself to crochet). And I really like her point at the end about including men equally in home life. However, I do think she would be a better authority on balancing home and work life if she had a child (not that anyone should take on that responsibility for so silly a reason). Having worked full-time and taken care of three children for a time-period (we're talking weeks, here) I find her lack of disbelief in the "women can have it all and stay sane" argument a little lacking in experience. ( )

This is a fairly brief, easily readable survey of what the author calls the "new domesticity"--the back to the home trend--and its impact on women.

I was already fairly familiar with a lot of the ideas--the cult of the natural, the romanticization of the past, and the "women leaving the workforce" idea. What makes the book work is that she ties it all together, as a manifestation of what is ultimately a pretty conservative, individualistic, DIY ethos. The new domesticity movement doesn't just place a burden on women to be nurturers: it places that burden on individual women to find their way and make their solutions. Whether it's questioning doctors about vaccines, homeschooling their kids, growing their own food, or quitting their job, the solutions are personal. Ultimately, as Matchar says (but could argue a little more forcefully) we need more collective, socially based solutions fo the problems women face. The New Domesticity is seductive--and there is creative satisfaction to be found in it--but it will not solve the problems women face today. ( )

I expected this, like all books about the current revival of homesteading (or self-sufficiency or hobby farming or whatever you want to call this movement), to be relentlessly cheerful. Not so. Matchar is a true journalist. Homeward Bound reads like an extended newspaper or magazine article, from the single-sentence summaries of appearance that accompany the introduction of each new interviewee ("Jenna, a forthright sparkplug of a woman in a plaid shirt and square-framed glasses, is fairly new at this too."), to the psychological and social analysis of action, word, motive, and repercussion.

The title — and cover image — gave me this impression: This book is going to be about women taking back the kitchen and crafts (and all the things once called "women's work") and are refusing to be told that they are anti-feminist or backward-thinking for doing so. They are reclaiming the word "domestic" from its status as a slur.

Yes . . . but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Matchar explains that that is what we think we're doing (there's the motive) but what we're really accomplishing, if we truly believe ourselves to be feminists, might be shooting ourselves in the feet (there's those repercussions).

One of the author's most oft-reiterated points is this: we can all agree that the workplace, by and large, sucks for both men and women. But it can be particularly frustrating for women, who are still paid, on average, just 70% of their equally-educated male peers, who often have little or no maternity or child care leave, and who are passed up frequently for managerial positions — especially if the person doing the hiring knows they have children. Women in general are seen as unstable and unreliable in the workforce, and doubly so if they have children they might think are more important than the minutae of their jobs.

Some women who are quitting their jobs to bake bread and grow veggies and homeschool their kids are saying, as I did, when I dropped out of the workforce, "Work sucks and it ain't getting any better. Screw the middleman. I'm my boss now and my job is to feed my family." As noble as this seems (and, yeah, I was getting a bit of a head), Matchar thinks that we have jumped off a ship that isn't sinking, as we thought, but is, in fact, still struggling to get out of the harbor. Feminism hasn't failed — it just isn't done yet. Just as we don't have total racial equality even though we have laudable civil rights laws, we don't have equality between the sexes, either — not in employment or anywhere else. To use another metaphor, our mothers didn't fail to win, they just started the fight. They tagged us in and we've walked away.

So the repercussion we didn't anticipate when we dropped out is that with fewer women in the workplace agitating for equality in pay and better benefits fewer advances will be made. In fact, there's the distinct danger that policies will backslide. I think this all might lose something being out of context, but I found it kind of terrifying.

A very thought-provoking read. ( )

An interesting look at a certain movement to "reclaim" domesticity by some women, as the conclusion remarks, much of this is quite class based, in many instances this is dependant on having a partner willing to support the person who decides to stay at home and that some are being very parochial about their choices and generalising from their own experience, thinking that it would work perfectly well for everyone, instead of embracing individuality. Many are against vaccination, state schooling and are willing to spend time at simple chores that the author points out are a choice to DIY instead of outsourcing to someone else.

There is no avoiding the concept that a lot of people are being broken by the modern educational, working and living system that is currently in place, but not everyone suits the same ways of life and everyone needs different things out of life, this book opens up more questions than it answers and it does so well. ( )