That's why I was so pleased to read about Shannon Hayes in this New York Times article:

SHANNON HAYES makes her own soap, composts her garbage and plans to home-school her unvaccinated daughters, who have grown huge and pink-cheeked on unpasteurized milk from the cow she milks herself. She eschews white sugar, white flour, television and plastic (though she has harvested the odd baby walker from a Dumpster). She eats food that she has raised with her husband, Bob Hooper, and her parents here at Sap Bush Hollow Farm, where the livestock is grass-fed, or that her neighbors have grown, some of which she preserves for winter. She dresses in used clothing, sits on secondhand furniture and lives in a solar-powered house made from (untreated) pine trees that grew here.

But before we either glow with envy or barf at her idealized lifestyle, Shannon has come out with the truth. In her own blog posting (yes, she blogs) she acknowledges: “We are the overeducated overachievers, sidestepping the conventional rat race for an alternative maelstrom.� Uber-momism doesn't stop at the city limits. It's a ton of work to live such an idealized life and don't think you're going to get any help from your barefoot and spelt-flour covered friends. They're too busy frantically trying to teach their toddlers Sanskrit and plus, as Shannon says, asking for help "would violate the ubermom code." In Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt writes about how to be the perfect parent and concludes that it is not the things that good parents do that makes them good parents, but the types of people that are good parents that make them do good things. In other words, you can take the uber-mom out of the urban rat race, but you can't take the rat race out of the uber-mom. Calling all enlightened homemakers! Shannon is looking to profile people who have opted to sidestep a conventional path to put family and the planet first for her next book project. Enlightened homemakers can be male, female or two people sharing the role, full or part-time. They may or may not have children. If you are or know an enlightened homemaker send an email with "enlightened homemaker" in the subject to feedback@shannonhayes.info.