Customer Reviews

Homemaking as a Social Art (P)

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Veronica Van Duin has done us all a huge favor by drawing on deep and timeless principles to forge a handbook to use in making family life work today. I am a single dad with grown children and have found out, they never really leave the nest (thank God) but they do come back home with some deeply challenging problems for "us" to confront. "Homemaking As A Social Art" helped me come to realize that "family" is not something you learn about, it is an ongoing growth process that you are going to be involved in all of your life and Veronika has distilled her own experiences and the wisdom of Rudolph Steiner down into a really usable book that makes you glow with the opportunity inherent in family living. Before "Homemaking As A Social Art" all I had to draw on was some Christian literature (Family Home Evenings) from the Mormons ( Great stuff) and Stephen Covey's book
The 7 Habits Of Highly Successful Families (A great book by the way)
This book is even better. Get it and you and your family will be happier and for the rest of your life you will be discover new ways to add meaning and deep enjoyment to your lives.

I had high hopes for this book. I agree with the author that homemaking needs to be "undertaken as a honored and valued task" and that what previous generations of homemakers knew by instinct is no longer instinctual to homemakers today. She goes on to state that we (modern homemakers) have "the right to expect knowledge to become the basis of what we do..."

Unfortunately, she does not go on to offer up any practical advice. Instead she rambles on for pages on her observations and principles. In her chapter concerning the Artistic Environment she informs us that bringing art into the home makes it warmer and more personalized. Are we really so out of touch that we don't know that already? Or the chapter on rhythm, which tells you that you should have a rhythm that is not too routine. How do you establish that rhythm? Oh,,,just wait and it will come to you, like a newborn's breathing pattern.

Bottom line? Check out Amazon .uk where you can preview the 6 pages of the book. Pay attention to the section on spirituality near the end of the preview; that is what the majority of the book is like.

This book really dealt with the importance of the art of homemaking being taken more seriously in our time. The author sends a reminder that the home is still very much the first line of defense for almost every societal issue that we deal with. We are either weakened or strengthened by our own home experience. Since the whole person, spiritual, physical, and emotional, resides in a home, we must pay attention to developing all facets in an enriching and honorable manner. I'd recommend this to anyone who is getting married, newly married, starting a family or just needing some additional insight into the family they already have.

I didn't find this book helpful at all. The author talks of general prinicples and things like always having fresh flowers on the dinner table. Nice, but not everyone can afford to do this. Nowhere does she give any real information about how to implement her principles, which is my pet peeve about these kinds of books. That's nice that these things are generally outlined, but what next? There has to be a happy medium between of "high ideals outline" and "how-to", this book never gets close.