Amazon’s Best Nonfiction Book of the Month for March 2024

Discover the complete social history of the housewife archetype, from colonial America to the 20th century, and re-examine common myths about the modern woman.

The notion of housewife evokes strong reactions. For some, its nostalgia for a bygone era, simpler and better times when men were breadwinners and women remained home with the kids. For others, its a sexist, oppressive stereotype of womens work. Either way, housewife is a long outdated conceptor is it?

Lisa Selin Davis, known for her smart, viral, feminist, cultural takes, argues that the breadwinner vs. homemaker divide is a myth. She charts examples from prehistoric female hunters to working class housewives in the 1930s, from First Ladies to 21st century stay-at-home moms, on a search for answers to the problems of what is referred to as womens work and motherhood. Davis discovers that women have been sold a lie about what families should be. Housewife unveils a truth: interdependence, rather than independence, is the American way.

The book is a clarion call for all womenmarried or single, mothers or childlessand for men, too, to push for liberation. In Housewife, Davis builds a case for systemic, cultural, and personal change, to encourage women to have the power to choose the best path for themselves.