My Mother Wears Combat Boots

My Mother Wears Combat Boots is a parenting guide for the rest of us written by Jessica Mills.

As a touring musician, artist, activist, writer, teacher, and mother of two, Mills was disappointed by run-of-the-mill parenting books that didn’t speak to her experience. So she set out to write a book tackling the issues faced by a new generation of moms and dads.

The result is a parenting guide like no other. Written with humor, extensive research, and much trial and error, My Mother Wears Combat Boots seeks to offer advice while still affirming that you’re honestly doing a great job.

My Mother Wears Combat Boots delivers sound advice and affirmation for parents of all stripes.

Amid stories of bringing kids (and grandparents) to women's rights demonstrations, taking baby on tour with her band, and organizing cooperative childcare, Jessica gives detailed nuts-and-bolts information about weaning, cloth vs. disposable diapers, the psychological effects of co-sleeping, and even how to get free infant gear.

This book provides a clever, hip, and entertaining mix of advice, anecdotes, political analysis, and factual sidebars that will help parents as they navigate the first years of their child's life.

My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for The Rest of Us. Jessica Mills. Paperback. 260 pages.

"Sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartwarming, Jessica Mills is brilliant in her own down-to-earth way. My Mother Wears Combat Boots avoids the pitfalls of the polemical and preachy and serves as an entertaining guide to how to raise a child into more than another blind consumer." —Sean Carswell, Razorcake magazine

"How unreal and yet real it is to have a mother of two bring along a babysitter on tour in a wonderful refusal to be 'tied down' by motherhood—and now have the experience written up in intelligent and captivating prose, alongside a wealth of 'how-to' info and inspiring stories that relate touring to family life and in the process redefine both. Excellent!" —Dick Lucas, Subhumans / Citizen Fish

Jessica Mills writes a punk-parenting column for Maximum Rock N Roll, plays saxophone for Citizen Fish, was Director of a birth center in Hollywood, Florida, makes jewelry in her metalworking studio, is mom to seven-year-old Emma-Joy and one-year-old Maya-Rae, and organizes childcare cooperatives. She lives with her partner and daughters in Seattle, WA.