Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink by Katrina Alcorn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I heard Alcorn speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women and thought her story was interesting enough to buy her book. The book was ok - it was a memoir of how she became overwhelmed as a working mother. She details how her anxiety and panic grew as she took on more responsibility at work and added a second, and then third child to her family. Finally determining that she needed a break from work, she takes time off, only to discover many other women in similar circumstances.
Interspersed with each chapter of her story was a short 2-3 page section about research supporting things she was going through - like maternity leave in different countries, or the percentage of women with undiagnosed post-partum disorders. While she explained in the preface of her book that she did that to make it more interesting than just a memoir, that's where I felt like the book failed. I wanted to hear someone's personal story, not read the same statistics and facts that I keep seeing in the news.
While I applaud her for both finding a solution that worked for her family as well as sharing the personal details of her story with a large audience, I didn't love the book, mostly because it purported to be more than that, when that would have been more than enough.
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