Previous Entry
Why I stopped reading parenting books (and then started again)
Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks | September 17th, 2008 - 9:00 AM
I so appreciated Liz’s recent MomSpeak post “Need advice? Just ask a mom.” (And not just because Parent Hacks appeared in her list. Although it was lovely to be included among such fantastic sites.) She reminded me of my own love-hate relationship with parenting advice books.
When my first child was born in 1999, there wasn’t yet a widespread Internet community for moms. There was BabyCenter, which was an incredible resource, but I never felt at home on its message boards. There were no blogs at the time, and I was a new enough mom that I hadn’t yet made many friends with children similar ages, and so I mainly relied on my trove of parenting books for advice.
Whenever I felt stumped as a parent (which was often), I paged through those books looking for answers. Everything seemed so seemed so clear, sitting there on the page, but when I tried to apply what I had learned to my own child, he rarely responded “by the book.” Was he broken? Or was I?
Just like that, I substituted expert advice for my own experience. My observations and gut feelings took a back seat to what I was reading. I was more likely to trust Dr. So-and-so than myself. Pretty soon, my head was so full of the advice I was reading (much of it contradictory) that I grew more confused than ever.
By valuing book advice over my own experience, I undermined the very thing I needed as I “grew into” being a mom: confidence. Some days, one needs nerves of steel to be able to parent, and the only way to develop them is to trust that you know your child best, and will find your way.
We moved to a new city when my son was a toddler, and I quickly made friendships with the moms in the neighborhood. Having a chorus of real-world advice — as opposed to my black-and-white expert books — gave me much-needed perspective about the wide range of “right” parenting choices. It also made room for my voice, which I have learned to give much more credit.
Thanks to the Internet, you can now live anywhere and still find a community of moms. There social networks devoted to moms, and thousands of blogs that are building a collective narrative of motherhood. Today, not only can one find real-world parenting advice as easily as Googling STOP USING PACIFIER, one can read the stories of other moms who are making it one day at a time, just like me. My site, Parent Hacks, was inspired by the discovery that the best advice usually comes from another parent.
Now that my “parenting experience meter” is working well, I find myself perusing the parenting books again. The difference now is that my voice doesn’t get lost among the experts’. I can appreciate and learn from their wisdom, but, in the end, the advice I follow is my own.
by Asha Dornfest, Parent Hacks
Amen.
I dutifully read What to Expect this-and-that like crazy. My daughter had a health problem that Heidi the Baby Nazi (my pet name for her) covered in half a paragraph, assuring me she’d be better than fine very soon. Um, no. I lost faith in the books so quickly, because here I was, trusting Heidi the Baby Nazi to tell me how everything was supposed to be…and she was clearly telling me pure bunk. (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia confirmed that she was, in this case, full of more bunk than a bunk factory.) My gut said, “my kid is sick” then, but books in general always should be taken with a grain of salt and the knowledge that your kid and your situation is always going to be just a little bit different.
Not that I haven’t gotten some fab advice from parenting books. I still sing the praises of Dr. Karp and the “Happiest” series. But yeah, I hear ya. You go with your gut and your baby’s needs.
Oh yeah, those What to Expect… books are little demon-spawned slices of hell. My mother-in-law got me When You’re Expecting after we revealed the news. I devoured it, and every time it advised me to “call your doctor” because symptom X “could indicate a serious problem” I was then reassured by my poor OB that I had nothing to worry about because there was a mundane, non-threatening explanation for whatever ailed me that hour. After about 500 calls and visits like this I quit reading the book and used it to prop up my coffee table. (Well, not really. My table was/is fine. But the stupid book would’ve been much more useful to me that way.)
Can we please not throw around the word Nazi like it is just a clever and funny phrase?
[...] Asha mentioned this post she wrote about reading parenting books. [...]
What’s everyone doing for safety precautions for Halloween? My husband came across an article (http://i-newswire.com/pr220892.html) with some info about background checking neighbors. I thought that may be a little overboard but it had some other good suggestions for some precautions I haven’t thought about. Last year my youngest son came down with a massive fever after Halloween. I almost thought about just taking the kids to our church’s fall festival this year instead of door-to-door to prevent that from happening again. I don’t know yet. What’s your advice? Am I over-reacted or just being a concerned mom?
As Amy mentioned, I nearly died when I saw the mention that blowing “into you” (ahem) during sex when pregnant could cause an embolism. That’s the day I stepped away from the books.
When I called my OB about something that “What to Expect” said was a serious issue, she sighed, told me it was normal & said, “that’s why we took that book off of our reading list.”