Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry

Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness

Jessica Valenti · 176 pages

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman · 352 pages

In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel?  Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter?  Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?  If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie?  What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?  NurtureSh

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

Judith Warner · 336 pages

The paradigm-shattering bestseller that investigates how women have fallen into the trap of "total motherhood," and how that mind-set damages them and their relationships with their husbands and children. Manic cookie-baking at midnight. Play dates as complicated as peace summits. Mother-of-the-birthday-boy meltdown. Ambien nights and Ritalin days. No sex. No nights out. No sleep. Ever. It's madne

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting

Pamela Druckerman · 284 pages

"The secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a "French parent." French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special. Yet, the French children Druckerman knows sleep through the night at two

Queen Bees & Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence

Rosalind Wiseman · 392 pages

"My daughter used to be so wonderful. Now I can barely stand her and she won't tell me anything. How can I find out what's going on?""There's a clique in my daughter's grade that's making her life miserable. She doesn't want to go to school anymore. Her own supposed friends are turning on her, and she's too afraid to do anything. What can I do?"Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter's ado

Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

William S. Pollack · 476 pages

Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men

Leonard Sax · 309 pages

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Mate · 320 pages

Canadian doctors Neufeld and Maté woke up one day to find that their children had become secretive and unreachable. Pining for time with friends, they recoiled or grew hostile around adults. Why? The problem, Neufeld and co-writer Maté suggest, lies in a long-established, though questionable, belief that the earliest possible mastery of the rules of social acceptance leads to success. In a society

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

Jennifer Senior · 308 pages

"Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In asking what the effects are of children on their parents, journalist Jennifer Senior analyzes the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half

Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason

Alfie Kohn · 272 pages

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Andrew Solomon · 721 pages

Solomon’s startling proposition in *Far from the Tree* is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, and who are transgender. While eac

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Paul Tough · 256 pages

Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in this book the author argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-con

Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families

Leslie Morgan Steiner · 346 pages

With motherhood comes one of the toughest decisions of a woman's life: Stay at home or pursue a career? The dilemma not only divides mothers into hostile, defensive camps but pits individual mothers against themselves. Leslie Morgan Steiner has been there. As an executive at The Washington Post, a writer, and mother of three, she has lived and breathed every side of the "mommy wars." Rather than j

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids

Meghan Daum · 282 pages

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Sharon Lamb, Lyn Mikel Brown · 336 pages

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

Angela Garbes · 256 pages

I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood

Trisha Ashworth, Amy Nobile · 206 pages

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads

Gary Greenberg, Jeannie Hayden · 240 pages

The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips & Advice on First-Year Maintenance

Louis Borgenicht, Joe Borgenicht · 228 pages

The Idle Parent

Tom Hodgkinson · 233 pages

The Winter of Our Disconnect

Susan Maushart · 296 pages

Let's Panic About Babies!: How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, and Finally Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being

Alice Bradley, Eden M. Kennedy

Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex

Judith Levine · 301 pages