Review of Text me when you Get Home by Kayleen Schaefer

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC of this book given in exchange for a fair and honest review!

After reading Kayleen Schaefer's Text Me When You Get Home, I really rethought my own relationship to other women.  While I am more of  Schaefer's generation, I found that I'm really more like her mom; as a mother of three kiddos, I don't have as much time to really invest in my personal friendships and the one I do invest it tend to be the ones with easy connections: kids the same age, work together so that there are obvious time we can talk, etc. If it becomes too hard to maintain the friendship or it takes to much time from my household, I'm not that interested.

Schaefer's book is a mixture of friendship memoir and sociological commentary. It looks at the way female friendships have evolved over time and the way media has reflected that change--or, in many cases, not reflected that change. It's true still that television loves a catfight between girls. I grew up in the height of celebreality and my entertaining moments were definitely comprised of the LC/Kristen Cavallari conflicts and the New York/Pumpkin spat. NewYork, in particular, made such a career of her fighting with other women that she's still immortalized in memes almost (or more than?) a decade later. It seems like women were always being pitted against each other for fun or, most commonly, for the love and affection of a guy.

Despite the media representation, it seems like women's friendships stay pretty powerful things; I see it played out over and over on my social media timelines where women share affection and praise each other for what they bring to their friendships. They welcome each other's babies to the world and share in each other's biggest moments, get each other through the hard parts, and have fun together. Yet Shaefer makes an excellent point: their relationships to each other are not prioritized or given the same respect as familial/marital relationships. Why not? Why are women being put in positions where they have to justify who is meaningful in their lives?

This book was a great overview of female friendship and very enlightening to read. I learned a lot from it and have really decided to spend more time nurturing my relationships with other women. I'm also buying my own BFF her own copy for Galentine's Day this very year.

3.5/5