Parenting Books

By Andrea Sachs

His bedside manner was famously reassuring; his advice was good old common sense: "Bringing up your child won't be a complicated job if you take it easy, trust your own instincts, and follow the directions that your doctor gives you."

We're talking about Dr. Benjamin Spock, who offered those soothing words to a nation of anxious parents in 1946. Since then, nearly 50 million copies of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care have been printed in 42 languages. Spock, whose presence loomed large during the formative years of the baby-boom generation, was 94 when he died in March, leaving the stage just as a new flock of parental advisers was coming on.

And they have come on strong. This year has seen a particularly rich crop of new parenting books--to no one's surprise, at least in the book-publishing business. The result of a "baby boomlet" is an 18-and-under generation that rivals the boomers in number. Their parents, moreover, are not only procreative, they're literate. Says Heather Vogel Frederick of Publishers Weekly: "This is a print-oriented generation of parents, and publishers are really capitalizing on that fact."

The real difference is more than just numbers. Life has changed since Dr. Spock first penned his book, to be sure. Grandma and Grandpa are less likely to live around the corner now. Mom may work. Dad may be the designated diaperer. Mom and Dad may not even be married anymore. Or Mom and Dad may be Mom and Mom, or Dad and Dad. Suddenly there are new dangers lurking, like schoolyard shootings and sex on the Internet. What's a parent to do--or to read?

Fear not: the market has responded, offering a choice of dozens of new books available at a bookstore or library near you. Even Dr. Spock updated his book just before he died, adding advice on such topics as open adoption, computers and divorce.

So many problems and so many answers! The vast array of titles can be confusing. Perhaps it's a good time to take a little of Dr. Spock's advice: Relax; trust your instincts. Many parenting books are meant to be not so much read as referred to when a problem arises. Others are more philosophical than instructive. Thumb through a few to find an author who suits your taste and needs.

With that bit of Spockian advice, here are some helpful books that have been published this year:

BRINGING UP BABY 101: HOW TO GET STARTED

First, the basics. "Parenthood is a very lonely business these days," says Ann Pleshette Murphy, editor in chief of Parents magazine. "There are so many different ways of being a 'good parent.' You can be married; you can have your first baby at 20, or at 40; you can be a single mom; you can be gay; you can be working; you can be at home. There are many options. But many options lead to much anxiety about what's the right way to do it."

Many parents acquire their first books even before the baby is born; What to Expect When You're Expecting (Workman) is a perennial favorite. Luckily, many parenting books are in inexpensive paperback editions; after all, kids rapidly outgrow such books, just as they outgrow clothes.

Murphy's own magazine has published The Parents Answer Book: From Birth Through Age Five (Golden Books). It takes parents from the breast-vs.-bottle-feeding debate to toilet training to sleepovers. The 900-page Parents Answer Book is intended as an encyclopedia of child care, ready to be pulled down from the shelf in a moment of need.

A rival publication, Parenting, has published Parenting Guide to Pregnancy & Childbirth (Ballantine), designed to take you from conception to the early weeks after birth. How should the pregnant mom eat? What about sex? What about exercise? When should you tell the news to your boss? Here are some answers.

In January, Broadway Books will be publishing The Black Parenting Book: Caring for Our Children in the First Five Years by Dr. Anne C. Beal, Linda Villarosa and Allison Abner. Besides offering parents standard child-care advice, the book addresses special concerns in the black community, such as dealing with racism and raising a child with self-esteem, as well as common health problems like lactose intolerance.

And of course, there is the fully revised and expanded Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock and Dr. Steven J. Parker (Pocket). The book takes the parent through adolescence. Child abuse, rock 'n' roll, AIDS: no topic is too difficult for Dr. Spock to address.

MELANCHOLY BABY: IS IT MORE THAN A CRYING JAG?

Just a few decades ago, experts were arguing about whether children were vulnerable to depression. Since then, doctors have found that childhood depression is common, although harder than adult depression to diagnose. With advances in scientific knowledge have come new books about childhood depression. "This has been an under-addressed category," says Elizabeth Rapoport, an executive editor at Times Books. "People didn't appreciate how complex children's inner lives are."

Growing Up Sad: Childhood Depression and Its Treatment by Dr. Leon Cytryn and Dr. Donald McKnew (Norton), sensitively explores childhood depression and helps parents spot problems in the home. "Seldom do we look upon children as small human beings, struggling like the rest of us to make sense of life, to satisfy needs, and to meet challenges as they arise," say the authors. "We tend to assume that children are somehow protected by their innocence."

Each child is the best source of information about the state of his or her own mental health, and the voices of depressed children come through loud and true in this book. The authors, both child psychiatrists, detail the significant advances in treatment and medication over recent decades, offering families new hope. They also present specific strategies for handling depressed children.

SPLITSVILLE, U.S.A.: DIVORCE IS A DOWNER FOR KIDS

With 1 of every 2 marriages ending in divorce, more than half of all American children have been part of a broken family. Books like Anthony E. Wolf's Why Did You Have to Get a Divorce? And When Can I Get a Hamster?: A Guide to Parenting through Divorce (Noonday) aim to help parents help their children through the ordeal. Wolf, a clinical psychologist who has worked with kids for almost 30 years, gives practical guidance for talking to children about tough issues. When, for example, is the right time to tell your son or daughter that you're getting a divorce? "Although there is never a good time," writes Wolf, "you will need at least to make sure that the moment you select is one when you will be together for a while, preferably on a nonschool day. When they are suddenly feeling very unsafe and very alone, they will need you to be there for them, so they can feel as safe as possible and not so alone."

Rabbi, family mediator and mental-health counselor M. Gary Neuman says it is time for us to face the new realities of marriage: "We must stop regarding new family structures--single-parent, step-, and blended--as somehow inferior and support these families for what they are: real families too." Neuman's book, Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way (Times), is meant to help parents navigate the choppy waters of divorce. Neuman is the creator of the Sandcastles Program, a workshop for the children of divorce, which has aided more than 30,000 kids. "The overwhelming majority of children of divorce feel sad, confused, angry, guilty and conflicted," writes Neuman. "When these feelings are not expressed and dealt with in a healthy, productive way, they endure and taint children's views of themselves."

FATHER KNOWS BEST: POPS WHO PITCH IN

Many dads have come to realize that parenting is not simply a "mom thing." The publishing industry has been happy to enlighten them, with a truckload of new books this year for the paternal wing of the family library.

Armin A. Brott has added a third book, A Dad's Guide to the Toddler Years (Abbeville), to his New Father series. (The first two were The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips and Advice for Dads-to-Be and A Dad's Guide to the First Year.) Brott writes honestly and earnestly. His wry sense of humor will be a relief to hassled parents. He observes, for example, that at 12 to 15 months, a toddler is "becoming aware of the expressive function of language and has developed an uncanny ability to pick out--and endlessly repeat--the one swear word you accidentally slipped into a 10-minute-long conversation." Brott also knows how to get a dad's attention: active fathering, he suggests, is "the ultimate aphrodisiac" for your partner.

After the tidal wave of books with advice for working mothers a few years ago, it was only a matter of time before the male version emerged. Marathon Dad: Setting a Pace That Works for Working Fathers by John Evans (Avon) leads the charge with advice directed at the father who wants to take part in parenting without giving up his career. Evans, a psychotherapist, sees Marathon Man as the natural partner of Super Mom: "another breathless man trying to juggle the demands of a full-time career and hands-on, involved parenting in a two-working-parent home." But the struggle to be a good father is worth it, says Evans, because we are engaged in nothing less than "a fundamental shift in the history of men."

A man may want to be a better father for less epochal reasons as well, says Evans: loving his children, wanting to give them more than just his name and his money, believing that it is not fair for his working wife to do the lion's share of the work. Evans attempts to show fathers how to juggle their professional and personal responsibilities without dropping the ball.

OPHELIA'S BROTHERS: FOCUSING ON BOYS

"A couple of years ago, everything was girls, girls, girls," says Times Books editor Rapoport. She is referring, of course, to the phenomenal success of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Ballantine) by Mary Pipher and the many copycat books that followed. Pipher, a clinical psychologist in Lincoln, Neb., argues that many girls lose themselves in adolescence, just as Ophelia, the tragic figure in Shakespeare's Hamlet, did. Popularizing the work of Harvard psychologist Carol Gilligan, Pipher urges the parents of adolescent girls to help their daughters avoid emotional traps like depression, eating disorders and suicide attempts. The book spent nearly three years on the best-seller lists, and continues to be popular.

But, says Rapoport, "now we're seeing--rightly--boys, boys, boys." In fact, says Howard Cohen, a marketing manager at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati, Ohio, "there have been so many studies done on girls. I think this is, I won't say a backlash, but it's coming back around." One popular title is Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood by William Pollack (Random House). It is boys who are in serious trouble, says Pollack, including many who appear at first glance to be doing just fine. Writes Pollack: "New research shows that boys are faring less well in school than they did in the past and in comparison to girls, that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are frighteningly on the rise."

Pollack, a professor at Harvard medical school, argues that boys are hamstrung by "the old Boy Code--the outdated and constricting assumptions, models and rules about boys that our society has used since the 19th century." Parents, he says, must "get behind the mask" and find out their sons' real feelings.

FROM THE CLOSET TO THE CRIB: GAY PARENTS GET GOING

The '90s have seen a sharp rise in the number of gays and lesbians raising children, the so-called gay-by boom. Some had children before realizing they were homosexual. More recently, many would-be gay parents have chosen adoption, foster care or artificial insemination. While exact numbers are not available, it has been estimated that 6 million to 14 million children are living with at least one homosexual parent. Publishers have sought to meet the needs of this community with books like the often controversial Heather Has Two Mommies (Alyson).

Even Dr. Spock's final revision includes a section on gay and lesbian parents. "Tests of psychological adjustment show no significant differences between the wellbeing of children raised by heterosexual parents and those raised by gay or lesbian parents," he wrote.

Books for gays who decide to become parents are still not an everyday publishing event. The most popular guidebook, The Lesbian and Gay Parenting Handbook: Creating and Raising Our Families (HarperPerennial), was published in 1993. The author, April Martin, is a psychologist in New York City and a lesbian mother. She walks parents through the intricacies of homosexual parenthood. "The children of lesbians and gay men are the most considered and planned-for children on earth," she writes. "There is virtually no such thing as an unwanted child among us."

CYBERSENIORS: '90S GRANDPARENTS

Baby boomers and Gen Xers may have taken over parenthood, but their own parents are also living longer and thus extending the family as well. By the year 2005 there will be an estimated 80 million to 90 million grandparents in the U.S. Only those codgers won't be sitting in rocking chairs, talking about the old days. Boomer grandparents are likely to be "younger, healthier, wealthier and better educated," say Kathryn and Allan Zullo, the husband-wife authors of The Nanas and the Papas: A Boomers' Guide to Grandparenting (Andrews McMeel). The Zullos give grandparents advice about keeping up with far-flung grandchildren, through e-mail and family websites, as well as traditional tips for childproofing their home.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, best known as a sex therapist, explains the importance of grandparents in her life and others' in Grandparenthood (Routledge). She and co-author Dr. Steven Kaplan also dispel the stereotypes: "Contrary to some popular images, most grandparents are neither feeble nor old." Instead, says Dr. Ruth, a grandparent can serve as a valued family historian, model, teacher, confidant or safety net. She also addresses the special concerns when a grandchild is adopted, or when the parents are interethnic or interracial.

Yes, there is a lot out there to digest. Yet for all the new books, bear in mind that they don't have all the answers either. Parenting involves a lot of common sense, which books can encourage but can't create from scratch. As Dr. Spock wisely said, "You know more than you think you do." Not enough to win yourself a book contract, maybe, but enough to pick and choose what works best for you from all these other tomes.