{"id":864,"date":"2010-07-01T19:14:55","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T19:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/radical-homemaker-fail.html"},"modified":"2010-07-01T19:14:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T19:14:55","slug":"radical-homemaker-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/07\/radical-homemaker-fail.html","title":{"rendered":"Radical homemaker FAIL"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madeline Holler is no Sharon Astyk<\/a>, and she knows it. She and her husband left a relatively high-income lifestyle for a place in the Midwest, where they found themselves living on a third of what they had been making. Excerpts:<\/p>\n

After we settled, I looked for work but couldn’t find childcare that made part-time work affordable. Instead, we cut back: no ballet, Kindermusik or swim lessons for the kid. No date nights or special gifts for us. We dressed in marked-down Old Navy and filled the car with gas just once a week. I missed my best friend’s wedding.
\nWe ate differently, too: We didn’t go out, I cooked mostly from scratch, we bought ingredients in bulk. I made my own yogurt, thin and sour compared to the $4 buckets of organic plain that we liked.
\nI didn’t know it eight years ago when we made this move, but spending less instead of earning more nudged us toward the Radical Homemakers<\/a> movement, a group of educated men and women living as if money’s not everything and working for The Man gets in the way of what is: relationships, health, freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Holler writes in a way that’s easy to empathize with about how ill-suited she was to the lifestyle. More:<\/p>\n

I wasn’t raised on a farm [and] I’ve never kept a basil plant alive from one caprese salad to the next. I don’t trust myself with a bread starter, much less livestock. Imagining total reliance on a backyard farm makes me cry for my starving children. I am comforted by our growing 401K. And I can’t help it: A little piece of me dies when I notice the baby sitter drives a nicer car than us.
\n… Like a majority of Americans, I’ll always prefer direct deposit to getting paid in chicken eggs. I’m comfortable with the smile-and-wave relationships I have with most of my neighbors. While I share the Radical Homemakers’ family, environmental and social justice values, the way they propose bringing about change requires too much of the kind of work I frankly don’t want to do. I’m fine giving up stuff. But I can’t imagine spending afternoons rendering fat and lacto-fermenting cucumbers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I kept finding myself wanting to judge this writer, but I know myself well enough to know that if I ever tried to radically live out the things I value, I’d almost certainly end up more like her than like Sharon, or like Caleb Stegall. I hope not, but I know my own weaknesses far too well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madeline Holler is no Sharon Astyk, and she knows it. She and her husband left a relatively high-income lifestyle for a place in the Midwest, where they found themselves living on a third of what they had been making. 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