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A review by sde
The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death by Jill Lepore
5.0
I can't believe this is the first book by Jill Lepore I have read. I never would have picked it up on my own, but it was part of a quarterly book box I subscribe to. It is all about the history of everyday domestic things like marriage and childrearing told in an extremely engaging manner with fascinating tidbits throughout.
If I highlighted my favorite parts of the book, I would pretty much be providing a paraphrase of the entire book, but perhaps that chapter that will stay with me the longest is the one on breastfeeding. We all know how it has come in and out of style, but the story behind campaigns to make it so were interesting. It also shows how a relatively minor issue was used to distract people from what mothers and babies really need:
"Non-bathroom lactation rooms are so shockingly paltry a substitute for maternity leave, you might think that the Second Gilded Age's craze for pumps -- especially the government's pressing them on poor women while giving tax breaks to big businesses - - would have been met with skepticism by more people than Tea Partiers. Not so."
If I highlighted my favorite parts of the book, I would pretty much be providing a paraphrase of the entire book, but perhaps that chapter that will stay with me the longest is the one on breastfeeding. We all know how it has come in and out of style, but the story behind campaigns to make it so were interesting. It also shows how a relatively minor issue was used to distract people from what mothers and babies really need:
"Non-bathroom lactation rooms are so shockingly paltry a substitute for maternity leave, you might think that the Second Gilded Age's craze for pumps -- especially the government's pressing them on poor women while giving tax breaks to big businesses - - would have been met with skepticism by more people than Tea Partiers. Not so."