I’ve been trying to write this review for a week. I keep getting bogged down in arguments. One last try: I originally requested an ARC of this (years ago, I’m ashamed to say) based exclusively on the title. I thought it would be a good fit for me—I do lots of “domestic”-type things: gardening, knitting, cooking from scratch. I’ve done some light canning and jam-making, preserved home-grown veggies in the freezer, and participated in a community garden. We take advantage of our local u-pick and wild-growing fruit options. I mend what I can until it’s too broken, and what I can’t or don’t know how to mend I donate. So this seemed like a great choice for me!
Reading this book was really frustrating, mostly because of the format. The author focuses on a few aspects of the DIY movement (stay-at-home bloggers, Etsy makers, DIY foodies, parenting, homemaking vs. working outside the home, and homesteading). In each chapter, she presents how some people are living in an extreme version of DIY and why they chose it, then she outlines why this idealized version is unrealistic for most everyone else.
Unfortunately, the author spent longer or did a better job of making the case of the DIY-ers than she did at showing why these are unrealistic positions of privilege.
By focusing on hard-core DIY-ers, the author alienated people who maybe just dabble—like me. After describing one situation (a stay-at-home Etsy seller, I think), she says, “If you’re not at least a tiny bit jealous at this point, you might want to check for your own pulse” (84). Um, I’m not, not even a little. I would be a terrible stay-at-home parent, I don’t want to work from home, I have no interest in keeping goats. By presenting only one class of DIY-ers, the author ignored all the part-timers, and with us, all the reasons why participate in home-making the ways we do.
I was angry most of the time I was reading this, because each DIY lifestyle is so unrealistic even if you would be satisfied with that lifestyle. An additional point of frustration—which the author does eventually get around to, over halfway through the book—is that by checking out (sorry, “opting out”), people who leave the workforce or the grocery store or whatever are helping their families have more time/nutrients/whatever, but that they are choosing to leave the rest of us on our own. I make most of my food from scratch because of health problems exacerbated by processed foods; if there were more of us to raise our combined voices about oils, ingredient sourcing, soy, accurate labeling, etc., we could eventually improve food systems so more of us could find things safe for us to eat. But when you quit your job and quietly make everything at home, you’ve silenced yourself and taken the power of your voice away from others who need you to advocate with them.
The other thing I’ll tiny-rant about are they attachment/homeschool parents. I do believe that most parents care about their children and want what’s best for them. But *far* too many rely on gut feeling to guide them. “Sears and other DIY-parenting gurus encourage skepticism [of science and professionals] by privileging the idea of maternal instinct over the knowledge of experts like pediatricians or child-development researchers: ‘What I learned from attachment parenting is that there is no expert better than me for my baby,’ Sears writes, quoting an AP parent” (134). Again and again the parents the author interviewed talked about what was “natural” for mothers to do. I have a special-needs adopted child; his birth mother, whom the older generation in my family refer to as his “natural mother,” should, according to these quoted women, have intuitively had everything she needed to keep a baby safe and loved. Don’t talk to me about what’s “natural” for mothers.