in the debate over media bias, there seems to be one form of bias that everyone, regardless of ideology, seems to agree on: the media are biased in favor of conflict and eager to tag any dispute with a "-gate" tag and gathering damning quotes from the combatants. And parents aren't free from that. I have, a great many times, blogged here about the overblown "Mommy Wars" stories.

So I was thrilled to hear that there is an entire book debunking the idea that working moms and at-home moms are at each other's throats. The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars by Miriam Peskowitz is out now on Amazon. Haven't read it yet (who do you think I am, an inveterate book reader like Elizabeth from Half Changed World?), but I'm loving the concept. It has to be better than Judith Warner's "Perfect Madness," which managed to get a giant MSM wet kiss. And I'm loving the author's thoughtful blog, Playground Revolution which has been focused of late on the interesting issues coming up on the book tour.

Let me leave you with an excerpt:

Mommy Wars reports insist on two essential kinds of mothers. Parenting choices last forever, the reports presume. Stay-at-home mothers never return to the workplace. Ardent working women committed to their jobs never up and quit because they get no support.

In real life, mothers move into and out of the paid workplace. Most mothers?upwards of 60 percent?work less than full-time. Not so in the world of the Mommy Wars, where the problem is never with the workplace?it?s just that these two types of mothers don?t get along. They never switch places; they never show empathy, only judgment. Neither group, we should suppose, gets along with the 18 percent of women in America who don?t have children. If only these different moms could love each other, well, the frustrations of motherhood would be solved. Lots of newspaper dailies and magazine issues are sold on this premise, and daytime TV pitches us the Mommy Wars like makeovers and insta-therapy.