A review by kbecker40
Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness by Jessica Valenti
2.0
A very short book that touched on a lot of subjects...
The title is deceiving -- I initially thought this would be a book about gauging the happiness of parenting; there were chapters devoted to this topic, but the book as a whole addressed several issues superficially. Much of it concentrated on the status of female expectations: those we put on ourselves and those that our modern society loads on mothers. However, Valenti used many web references and blog sites to confirm her ideas; these references are the "Wikipedia" of reputable research and many of her statistics were sketchy and questionable. Bloggers are not experts and blog posts are not readable content in book form. The books is too short to sufficiently address some of its important issues, and Valenti's tone is preachy and opinionated.
The title is deceiving -- I initially thought this would be a book about gauging the happiness of parenting; there were chapters devoted to this topic, but the book as a whole addressed several issues superficially. Much of it concentrated on the status of female expectations: those we put on ourselves and those that our modern society loads on mothers. However, Valenti used many web references and blog sites to confirm her ideas; these references are the "Wikipedia" of reputable research and many of her statistics were sketchy and questionable. Bloggers are not experts and blog posts are not readable content in book form. The books is too short to sufficiently address some of its important issues, and Valenti's tone is preachy and opinionated.