Perfect Parents: Baby-Care Advice Past and Present

From the mid-eighteenth century to the present day, parents have been bombarded with advice on how to look after their babies. Here, Christina Hardyment provides a much-needed new perspective on the whole perplexing business, showing that not only has the advice given always been subject to the prevailing fashions and to the personal quirks of their authors, but that the books have had a hand in provoking the anxieties they set out to quell. From Rousseau and Locke to Lydia Child and Maria Edgeworth; from James B. Watson's admonitions about physical contact ("Never hug and kiss them.") to Jean Liedloff's insistence that babies should be kept physically attached to their mothers until they positively struggle to get away, it's all here: the exortations, the warnings, the assurances on everything from the breast to the potty.

erfect Parents is an absolutely superb slice of social history--extraordinary, riveting, hair-raising, funny and, ultimately, wonderfully reassuring.