A Homemaker’s Education
Here are some of my favorite books related to the topics I write about on A Homemaker’s Manifesto. These are the titles that have helped shape my convictions about faith, womanhood, homemaking, culture, and the deep roots of the postmodern crisis.
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🏛️ The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self — Carl R. Trueman
A rigorous examination of how the modern idea of “the self” was formed — and how expressive individualism came to dominate our moral, sexual, and political imagination. Trueman traces the philosophical and theological roots of today’s identity crisis with clarity and restraint. This book explains why the modern world feels so hostile to truth, embodiment, and inherited meaning — and why the household has become one of its primary casualties.
🪞 The End of Woman — Carrie Gress
My top recommendation for understanding the history and moral ramifications of feminism. Gress traces the intellectual and cultural forces that have reduced women to interchangeable, disembodied selves — severed from fertility, relationality, and embodied purpose. This book exposes how feminism’s promised freedom has instead produced confusion, exhaustion, and the erasure of women themselves.
💔 Love Thy Body — Nancy R. Pearcey
Another essential read — Pearcey writes with the precision of a scholar and the heart of a mother. A stunning Christian response to the lies of the sexual revolution and the spiritual harm of disembodied thinking which gives striking insight into the similarities between the ancient world and our own modern world re: the devaluation of the human body.
📜 God in the Dock — C.S. Lewis
A collection of essays, letters, and speeches offering timeless responses to the cultural questions of Lewis’ day — which feel even more urgent in ours. This is a wonderful research for the modern-day apologist responding to many of the pressing moral, philosophical, and theological issues you may be confronted with daily.
🔍 The God Who Is There — Francis Schaeffer
A powerful defense of biblical truth against relativism. Like Lewis, Schaeffer was ahead of his time — and more relevant than ever today. Pairing this with Trueman’s book make up for an excellent mini-course on the history of philosophical thought over the last 200 years, and how we got to where we’ve arrived as a culture today.
👑The Story of Sex in Scripture — Barbara K. Mouser
This was recommended to me by a member of our Created Female community — and became an instant favorite. It was like the author was in my head, but of course she is examining glaring themes in scripture relating to men, women, and creation. A striking look at the beauty and meaning of “male and female created He them” as told through the grand drama of Scripture.
🌸 The Privilege of Being a Woman — Alice von Hildebrand
A profound meditation on the dignity, vocation, and spiritual power of womanhood. With philosophical depth and deep personal reverence, von Hildebrand articulates a vision of femininity rooted in receptivity, moral clarity, and love — not as weakness, but as a uniquely feminine strength. Much of this book echoed convictions I had already begun to form on my own, giving language and structure to truths that felt intuitively real but rarely articulated. It is a quiet but luminous defense of woman as she was created to be.
🏡 The Household and the War for the Cosmos — C.R. Wiley
A stirring vision of the Christian household as a spiritual battleground and as a living reflection of cosmic truth. Wiley argues that the home is not a private retreat from the world, but the primary site where order, authority, inheritance, and love are rightly practiced. In an age that seeks to dissolve the family into individual consumers and isolated selves, this book calls Christians to recover the household as a place of formation, resistance, and faithfulness, where the ordinary work of daily life participates in a much larger spiritual war.
🕊️ Live Not By Lies — Rod Dreher
Part cultural commentary, part survival manual. Dreher draws on the lived experience of Christians who endured life under soft totalitarian regimes to warn that similar pressures are emerging in the modern West. Without alarmism, he shows how ideological conformity, technological surveillance, and social coercion erode truth and moral courage over time. Yet this book is ultimately hopeful: a reminder that faithful Christian living under pressure is not only possible, but necessary — and that resistance begins in the formation of conscience, community, and the habits of daily life.
📘 What Your Husband Isn’t Telling You — David Murrow
An exploration of the inner world of men — emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically — with attention to the things husbands often struggle to articulate. Murrow examines how men process responsibility, stress, identity, faith, and relationships, helping women understand the unseen pressures and motivations shaping male behavior.
🧠 His Brain, Her Brain — Walt & Barb Larimore, MD
A science-based look at the divinely designed neurological and hormonal differences between male and female brains. The book explains how biology influences communication styles, emotional processing, risk response, and problem-solving, giving a physiological foundation for many everyday relational differences.
🌷 The Empowered Wife — Laura Doyle
A practical look at how a wife’s posture — especially around control, criticism, and respect — shapes the emotional climate of a marriage. Doyle focuses on personal responsibility and relational dynamics rather than trying to fix a husband.
💞 Love and Respect — Emerson Eggerichs
Centered on the idea that women deeply need love and men deeply need respect, this book explains how marriages fall into negative cycles when those needs are missed and offers tools for restoring a pattern of mutual security and honor.
📕 Unburden Yourself — Isa Ryan
A gentle, practical guide to daily Christian faith practice for women who feel anxious, overwhelmed, or weighed down. This book reframes feminine virtue not as striving or perfection, but as rest — the heart posture of a soul surrendered to Christ.
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