Radical Homemakers Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

Mother Nature has shown her hand. Faced with climate change, dwindling resources, and species extinctions, most Americans understand the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crises-drive less, consume less, increase self-reliance, buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.In essence, the great work we face requires rekindling the home fires.Radical Homemakers is about men and women across the U.S. who focus on home and hearth as a political and ecological act, and who have centered their lives around family and community for personal fulfillment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where domination and oppression are cast aside and where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.Radical Homemakers nationwide speak about empowerment, transformation, happiness, and casting aside the pressures of a consumer culture to live in a world where money loses its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity. If you ever considered quitting a job to plant tomatoes, read to a child, pursue creative work, can green beans and heal the planet, this is your book.

"The world is moving towards a tougher period, when the relative ease and luxury we've known will be tested. But that test can deepen our family and community lives, as Shannon Hayes shows, providing more of us-of both genders-become homemakers."-Bill McKibben, author of Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

"Brilliant, visionary, and practical. This is a mind-bending book that will forever change your view of human possibility and compel you to rethink your life. My highest recommendation."-David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy and The Great Turning, and board chair of YES! magazine

"Shannon Hayes retrieves the word "homemaker" from being a sort of quaint, yellowing doily laid in the sideboard, along with frugality and simplicity, and shows how radical, indeed, it is to take responsibility for the health of your family, community and world by raising wonderful food, wonderful kids and a wonderful ruckus in the face of injustice or greed. She and her husband had the courage to 'do the math' and see that a double-income life was not worth living (and was barely worth the money). They also had, as most radical homemakers do, the canny ability to question the standard assumptions about the good life . . . they could develop the skills, patience, and community connections of homemaking while keeping their minds sharp and their lives relevant. At a time when many of the pillars of our security are wobbly-the economy, oil and water and mineral supplies, climate predictability-I predict that Radical Homemakers will become a bible for those seeking to make their lives more manageable, safe, and deeply fulfilling."-Vicki Robin, coauthor of Your Money or Your Life and host of yourmoneyoryourlife.info

"The real 4-Hour Workweek. Reclaim and upgrade your life with this urgently needed work from the integrity-driven soul of Shannon Hayes. No lives of quiet desperation here: rejecting outmoded, inauthentic and toxic societal practices, Shannon and her peers do nothing less than redesign the work-life-success paradigm. Breathtaking, scholarly, passionate and inspiring."-Holly Hickman, Radical Homemaker, former Fox News Radio reporter and creator of SustainableSuppers.com

"Imagine women with masters degrees and PhDs who choose home over career advancement. Imagine wives (and husbands) who reject the false promise of endless paid labor to tend gardens and children and friendships. In a time when Wall Street MBAs-producing nothing of value but rewarded with million-dollar bonuses and blinded by greed-have driven our country to bankruptcy and despair, Shannon Hayes' stories of women and men who choose simplicity, authenticity and community inspire hope. Outside the boxes of both conservatives and liberals, this book is radical thinking at its best. Read it and think."-John de Graaf, coauthor of Affluenza and director of Take Back Your Time