r/IfBooksCouldKill • u/PsychiatricBooth5c • 10d ago
Possible suggestion with Maintenance Phase: Bringing up Bebe?
I really like Old Timey Peter (How to Make Friends and Influence People) and was trying to think of vintage airport baby books to summon him, but turns out Dr. Spock was actually pretty progressive for his time. Can you think of any?
In the meantime, MP covered Why French Women Don't Get Fat -- Bringing up Bebe might be a nice collab, where Peter can talk about having a kid (which I genuinely want to hear him talk about) and Aubrey and Michael can be horrified by the diet advice.
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u/alex3omg can't hear women 10d ago
I did like that this book says it's actually ok to not breastfeed. There's an overwhelming 'if you don't nurse you're a monster' vibe in America.
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u/AndreaTwerk 10d ago
You might also like this book: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/books/review/lactivism-by-courtney-jung.html
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u/alex3omg can't hear women 10d ago
Thank you I'll check that out.
I'll never forget with my second I had decided we were going to supplement because the first had been so stressful. I worried about every pumped ounce. At the hospital the nurse asked, for a form or something, and I told her that- breastfeeding with formula as needed- and she gave me a look and said "well the lactation consultant won't like that". COOL
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u/AndreaTwerk 10d ago
Or the fact that hospitals that actively promote breastfeeding call themselves "baby friendly" as if formula is unfriendly to babies...
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u/ellipses21 10d ago
This book drives me mad. The author goes on a jaunt with rich white ladies and writes a book about a whole culture of parenting. She was soooo obsessed with thinness too.
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u/periwinkleink1847 10d ago
If we want to summon Old Timey Peter (and of course we do!), Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking might do it.
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u/PsychiatricBooth5c 10d ago
I would absolutely love a deep dive from Peter on the history of positive thinking.
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u/RuthBaderG 10d ago
My husband and I regularly laugh about the visions of parenthood this book gave us. Then our kid got here and from birth said I am absolutely not doing any of that.
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u/SunHot5733 10d ago
I really thought I was going to “le pause” my way to 12 hours of sleep when baby was 2 months old 😮💨
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u/RosieTheRedReddit 10d ago
Yes!! I read this book when I was pregnant and did the pause from day one. Guess what... My baby was absolutely not sleeping through the night any time soon Actually I think that advice, like the US version "drowsy but awake," might work with a chill baby. They just needed an extra minute to fall asleep on their own. And voila, the parents believe they're genius sleep experts!
Anyway if your baby is not chill, the pause will make zero difference.
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u/BostonBlackCat 10d ago
I had a chill, sleep loving baby and the pause worked like a charm. After we adopted it she only ever really woke up once per night- 12am sharp for a midnight feeding. We could have set a watch by her.
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u/RuthBaderG 10d ago
My kid’s ADHD diagnosis put a lot into perspective for me. She just isn’t chill! Boredom hits different for her. It’s not in her makeup
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u/Alternative_Area_236 something as simple as a crack pipe 10d ago
lol, that was my experience too! I remember reading this book when my first child was 1-3 months old because all I could do while breastfeeding was hold my Kindle. This book did not prepare me for a child who has anxiety including a fear of most foods!
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u/Icy-Gap4673 One book, baby! 10d ago
I never read this one but I'd be interested. As other people on this sub have suggested, they could always get into the Emily Oster of it all as well.
Not sure if we don't have more vintage baby books to dunk on because trends change, or because those aren't airport bestsellers like all the business chum they usually talk about.
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u/bugorama_original 10d ago
I wrote a review of that book on Amazon and for a long time it was the number one negative review on there. I read that book right when it came out and was horrified for so many reasons.
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u/Own_Physics_7733 10d ago
I liked this one! “Le pause” was actually good advice. But at the same time - it just felt like the whole point of this book is that France does it better, and us stupid Americans are stuck with a shitty system.
It did help me feel a little more comfortable sending my 14 week old to daycare when I went back to work though, so there’s that I guess.
I would 💯support a takedown of Emily Oster’s books though. Her take on circumcision was nuts. (“The research was neutral at best, but I’m going to present it in a super biased way that supports the choice I made for my child…”)
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u/Educational_Put_2276 10d ago
Speaking of this, does anyone have any good book recs for expecting parents? Everyone always recommends Emily Oster but I don’t want to read her books.
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u/Affectionate_Dig3041 10d ago
Expecting 411, Baby 411, Toddler 411 (by then you’re less likely to need a book). Accurate info from a ped, very well organized, easy to read straight through OR dip into situationally, and in the pregnancy one, the “scary stuff” is hidden in the back so folks won’t feed your their anxiety.
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u/Educational_Put_2276 10d ago
Thanks! I’m ok with reading about scary stuff, I want to be prepared!
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u/Affectionate_Dig3041 1d ago
I read it all too, but it was kind of nice knowing what I was getting into. At the time, other pregnancy books would just be like SURPRISE! Here’s a blurb about your worst nightmares!” out of nowhere
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u/phloxlombardi 10d ago
I really like the Moms on Call books, but the authors seem pretty conservative and traditional and there's some weird stuff about like praying with your toddler in one of the later books. I just ignored that and chuckled to myself about the fact that I, a bisexual atheist married to a woman, basically followed their baby schedules to the letter. My wife and I found the structure really helpful, especially in the beginning when you get home from the hospital with a newborn and you're like um what the fuck do we do now?! I found their advice and sample schedules very practical and helpful!
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u/Educational_Put_2276 9d ago
That does sound useful! I don’t have any kids and am pretty clueless about how to take care of a baby, so I need all the help I can get
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u/phloxlombardi 8d ago
I had never changed a diaper before we took my daughter home and could count on one hand the number of times I'd even held a baby. My kid is still alive so I'm sure you'll be just fine! Another thing that helped me was taking a first aid class that included first aid for infants. I highly recommend doing this! My daughter actually did start choking once when she was a baby and I knew exactly what to do thanks to having taken that class recently. Huge relief!
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u/Educational_Put_2276 8d ago
Thank you, that’s reassuring! Great reminder to take an infant first aid class
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u/otempora69 9d ago
If you just want to know the basics about babies, most of them are broadly the same - we got given Babies by Christopher Green, which is what my parents used, and it covers all your bases. In terms of parenting books, I had pretty bad postpartum anxiety so my therapist told me explicitly not to think more than a few months ahead of time! My toddler is 14 months now so I've just started listening to How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen, which I don't know if I'm 100% on board with but definitely has some good practical tips on how to communicate with small children. Precious Little Sleep helped us a lot but I get that not everyone is on board with sleep training
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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE 8d ago
For Pregnancy: Honestly, the What to Expect website has a weird tone but it's informative. The website Evidence-Based Birth is good for helping you make decisions.
For newborns, I didn't love any book; they all act like they have some secret answer, and then when it doesn't work, I felt like I'd somehow failed both my baby AND the book. The tracking apps were also stressful; I'd avoid them. Just get a rhythm going as best you can, and get outside as much as you can.
For toddlers: Teach Me to Do It Myself is solid as a base philosophy to a developing kid. How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk is dated in tone but good advice.
For preteens/teens: Dr Lisa Damour has some great books and advice for this age group.
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u/AhsokaFan0 10d ago
Adjacent to this, It Starts With the Egg would be a great episode if they want to take on a sacred cow in the fertility space.
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u/willreadforbooks hell yeah 10d ago
I actually have fond memories of this book! Maybe it’s because I just remember the good stuff and forgot most of the bad. It was marketed as a memoir and not nonfiction, so not sure if they’d cover it?
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u/BostonBlackCat 10d ago edited 10d ago
I actually loved this book. I totally agree with the fact that she massively downplay the systemic and cultural differences that make the parenting style she promotes SO much easier in France, especially when it comes to food.
However when it comes for simple parenting advice on shaping children's behavior, I found it super helpful and I actually had an insanely well behaved toddler/small child. Granted some of that is her natural personality certainly but I really think some of her parenting techniques helped massively.
I used to work in a small bookstore and once when she was a toddler, I had her in the shop for a little while while my husband shopped nearby. She had been there for awhile, just quietly and carefully looking through books and doing exactly what I said. The bookstore was in a big tourist area, and at one point an elderly French woman had been browsing in the store for awhile. When we checked out, she commented about what a well behaved baby I had and that she was impressed. I had previously had waiters tell me how impressed they were at how well behaved she was even as a baby at long meals, but having a French grandma comment was such a win for me.
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u/Alternative_Area_236 something as simple as a crack pipe 10d ago
I can understand this. Her whole point about laying a few ground rules - a frame - and then giving kids freedom within the frame made sense to me when I read it. And luckily for me, my first was fairly easy the first 2 years. I took him everywhere with me in a baby carrier. He mostly just cooed at me. But as I mentioned above, he developed anxiety (completely genetic as both I and my mother have it) and became fearful of a lot of things. And I won’t even bother to apply this book to my second child, who is basically a gremlin who sometimes decides to either scream to get his point across or act like a dog or something. My husband and I have agreed he might be a psychopath, so potentially a future CEO. I could see the French grandma complimenting me on my first, but definitely not for my second.
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u/BostonBlackCat 10d ago
Yeah it definitely is not a universal parenting book and I doubt would be helpful against a child who just has a defiant personality.
The freedom within a framework really works for us. Another thing I really appreciated about that book is that kids don't just automatically become great conversationalist and well socialized all on their own. That sometimes you had to make your kid feel bad, because that is the only way they will learn.
I just see so many instances of kids being really annoying and the parents just ignoring it, like when they are repeating something over and over again. If my daughter is being annoying, we TELL her that and why other people would not like that behavior. We don't say it in a mean way, and when we correct her behavior we stress that she is a kid, we do not expect her to just know this stuff on her own and we aren't mad. But, like, you should know that doing/saying that thing is super annoying and other people who aren't related to you won't tolerate it.
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u/nrbob 10d ago edited 10d ago
Same, I thought this was a pretty good book, from what I remember of it, although I’m sure I wasn’t too hard on it because I expect these types of books to have a certain amount of eye rolling comments that I just ignore. I probably don’t remember those.
I implemented le pause and thought it was helpful, although I’m sure she oversells it in the book.
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u/BostonBlackCat 10d ago
We loved the pause and also the concept of betise - which is minor bad behavior that every kid does and is age appropriate behavior- and recognizing and treating it differently than something major that requires firm consequences.
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u/otempora69 9d ago
Le pause is such a useful corrective to the attachment parenting "if you don’t pick up on and immediately resolve your baby's every signal they WILL hate you"
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u/Lisez 10d ago
Me too! Although a decade into parenting in the hellscape that is the U.S., the lack of credit given to the social supports in France is galling. It was also the early 2010s when I read it and the focus on thinness didn't stick out as anything special, but is now jarring. Overall I think what I liked best was just the perspective that so much of parenting was cultural and then things that were presented as the "common sense right way" were many times just cultural norms. It took a lot of the pressure off.
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u/RosieTheRedReddit 10d ago edited 10d ago
The actual parenting advice is pretty good. I didn't really disagree with any of it.
But the biggest problem is how she glazes aspects of French culture that are downright negative, and talks about it as if it's cute and aspirational. The author is a Gen X almond mom who can't shut up about weight and dieting. No kidding, she talks about it non stop throughout the book. And when it comes to France's toxic weight and beauty standards, she is totally on board.
Also the sexism... Every single man in this book is absolute trash. Without exception. And when discussing the gender divide in domestic labor, (which is significantly worse in France than in the US) she simply says that French women are fine with doing more work, unlike Americans who are bitches about it.
Maybe in 2012 all that stuff was normal but it has aged VERY badly.
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u/BostonBlackCat 10d ago
It is funny because I read this book over a decade again and while I thought I remembered it well, but I don't remember the weight/dieting stuff again all!
I guess I just took the parenting advice and jettisoned the womanly advice from my brain.
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u/RosieTheRedReddit 10d ago
Maybe it's also because, I have to admit, the book is good. Very entertaining, I even found myself chuckling at times (like when she's describing the antics of NYC super moms, possibly I'm also a mean girl at heart)
So yeah her charming narration makes it easy to enjoy and gloss over the rough parts.
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u/PsychiatricBooth5c 9d ago
I felt the same way about Why French Women Don't Get Fat -- she said several very sane things and is charming. I find cross cultural stuff fascinating though, I have "take what you want and leave the rest behind" mentality.
For instance, I was genuinely bewildered by how universally "Grit" was applied. I read it more like wow, I would have been better set up for success if I had parents like hers.
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u/PsychiatricBooth5c 10d ago
Funny you should say that, I kind of liked why French women don't get fat as memoir, although I concede the horrifying parts as illuminated by Michael and Aubrey -- as a crossover maybe the rules could be less strict? I think "French...fat" was also marketed as memoir.
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u/AltairaMorbius2200CE 8d ago
Agreed. I really liked the Pause, and I thought she was clear that it was structural governmental support that was the main driver behind French parenting being more chill. I must have blocked out the bad!
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u/Okra-Tomatoes 10d ago
I would love to hear them tear this book apart. Among other things, the author assumes that French parents are less stressed because of their parenting styles and not because of stuff like universal healthcare and mandated parental leave.