“In a book crackling with humor and sarcasm, the authors…point out a growing obsession with this idealized, and guilt-inducing, version of motherhood that women can’t achieve.” —Chicago Tribune
I have one word for The Mommy Myth: FINALLY! With humor, wit and solid information, Douglas and Michaels take on the sentimentalized, privatized moralism of contemporary motherhood and show how it harms both women and children. — Katha Pollitt author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture
“An absolutely fascinating exposé…this eye-opening report contains a wealth of valuable insight into the never-ending, and ultimately self-defeating, quest for the maternal perfection glorified by contemporary American society.” — Booklist
“In sharp, funny, fed-up prose…The Mommy Myth takes such a cathartic bite out of the celebrity-mom mystique, you can save that backup carton of Coffee Heath Bar Crunch for a different emergency.” — The San Diego Union-Tribune
“A full-on feminist attack on the way the media portrays mothers, done in a manner reminiscent of Susan Faludi’s Backlash…The Mommy Myth provides a sprightly and thought-provoking tour through the last thirty years of feminist attitudes toward motherhood.” — The Washington Post
“The Mommy Myth” is a fun read and a smart one, too…Witty, engaging, and backed by a lot of research,” — The Nation
“This is a book for mothers who can admit that they yell sometimes, feed their children processed food, and occasionally get bored playing Barbie camp-out under the dining room table…It’s a book for mothers who would be okay with being imperfect, if only the rest of the world would stop pointing out their shortcomings.” — The Washington Post
“The chapter ‘Attack of the Celebrity Moms’ is alone worth the price of the book for its dead-on analysis of the ways stars and the people who write about them constantly harp on the pleasures of family life.” — The Baltimore Sun
“Lively and irreverent, The Mommy Myth…pokes fun at airbrushed profiles of celebrity moms and pokes holes in the media panics about child safety, including a fascinating demolition of the ;epidemic’ of cracks babies, an alarmist falsehood from start to finish.” — The American Prospect
“Fascinating, funny, smart, scary, and long overdue, The Mommy Myth debunks the next big myth that’s gotta come down: that of the Perfect Mother. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT SKIP THIS BOOK.” — Cathi Hanauer, editor of Bitch in the House and author of My Sister’s Bones
Susan J. Douglas 