Mom, Will This Chicken Give Me Man Boobs?: My Confused, Guilt-Ridden, and Stressful Struggle to Raise a Green Family.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

It’s not easy being a green mom. Making environmentally friendly choices every day is hard. And expensive. All you need is to make sure your every action and purchase is certified organic, hormone- and pesticide-free, fair-trade, local, sustainable, low-impact, free-range, recyclable, ethically sourced, and doesn’t increase your carbon footprint. Bring on the green guilt, for one can—should!—always do more. Walk, don’t drive. Eat only happy chickens. Make sure your T-shirt wasn’t made using child labour. Unplug appliances when not in use. Know what’s in your shampoo. Worry that cow farts are contributing to global warming. Can you be an enviro-mom and still keep your sanity?

Harding entered the green wars with determination and good intentions. She patted herself on the back for switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs and buying only guilt-free tuna. But how to rev up her greenness to a deeper shade now that her kids’ school is demanding garbage-free lunches and her daughter wants to save the polar bears?

She wades through the sea of contradictions and confusion that passes for green information in the media as she examines every aspect of family life: food, public transit, water usage, clothing, travel, cosmetics and toiletries, even birthday parties and Christmas celebrations. From taking shorter showers to buying carbon offsets for vacation travel, she reports on her adventures in living sustainably in Alberta, Australia, and B.C. Her beautifully light and humorous style means every mother leading a household’s charge against the insidiousness of climate change will definitely want to take this book to the checkout and drop it in her reusable shopping bag.