Parenting books and anxiety

While I was on vacation I spent a lovely, lazy hour in a big used bookstore browsing, while my baby napped in the hand-me-down Ergo carrier I’d received that afternoon.

The sign for the Parenting section caught my eye, but just reading the spines of the books made me feel uneasy.  The titles promised to help my child think better, eat right, feel confident, be a boy or a girl, and a host of other things our family was clearly doing wrong without the book’s help.  I felt exhausted and disheartened and I hadn’t even taken a book off the shelf.

Maybe I’ll have to eat my words when I turn desperately to one of these books for advice  — I have certainly been grateful for baby sleep books in the past — but right now this all seems unnecessary to me and more likely to breed anxiety than to support health and joy.

I meet my baby’s physical needs, offer her a lot of love and freedom, some clear boundaries, and the opportunities to watch and participate as I and others who love her navigate things like food and gender.  That seems like enough for now.  So I walked away from the Parenting section and buried my nose in Memoirs.