To me the name Cynthia Eller means academic books on feminist spirituality. So I was delighted to discover that among her writing projects is this essay she wrote, published by my favorite parenting magazine, Brain, Child, in which she critiques Dr. Sears’ popular attachment parenting manual The Baby Book.
Eller’s reading
Eller’s problem with The Baby Book is how it legitimates its advice as the “natural” way of parenting. She writes: 
Whether babies cry in every culture or only some, the underlying premise that all peoples who haven’t been smeared with the taint of Western industrial-capitalist-consumerist values parent their children in the same “natural” way is absurd.
Eller sees the book as both a romanticization of imagined primitive peoples and an unfair means of coercing women away from making their own best choices for themselves and their children:
As a parent, I resent having to measure my civilized, bookish, awkward approach to mothering against the supposedly effortless, natural perfection of “simpler” women the world over . . . especially when these “simpler” and more “natural” women don’t actually exist. Wherever you find people mothering children, it is as complicated and culturally-bound as mothering is here at home.
I love how Eller describes having to resort to having her husband hide The Baby Book in the garage and looking up medical information in it when she’s not looking. It reminds me of having to give away What To Expect When You’re Expecting when I got pregnant, because I kept being tempted to read it even though I knew that reading it would make me miserable.
My reading
Here is what I wrote about The Baby Book about halfway through my pregnancy. My language was more crass than usual, reflecting a pregnancy attitude that I noticed at the time, so I’ve edited gently:
I can’t remember who originally recommended the Sears’ The Baby Book to me but it must have been someone I trust because I got a used copy and this week I started reading it. I thought I’d just read the first chapters about prepping for baby, giving birth, and having a newborn. It turns out I couldn’t even finish these chapters.
The cover attributes primary authorship equally to a husband and wife team, both of them healthcare professionals. But the text is written primarily in the voice of the husband, with little italic interludes from the wife that offer the experience of a real parent counterpoint to the husband’s doctorly advice. They’re both parents and they’re both healthcare professionals but he gets to be the doctor in the book and she gets to be the Mom.
Most of the text is addressed to Mom, with set aside sections for Dad with advice that mostly boils down to, “Listen up dude, your [genitals] won’t fall off if you touch the baby.” The implication is that Mom necessarily has primary responsibility for baby and that Dad must be tricked into participating.
So I think this book has lots of really smart and useful information, but the gendered assumptions drive me nuts. I’m giving up on reading it and leaving it on the shelf for reference.
My inability to overlook these style choices is probably part of a general trend of becoming less accommodating since I got pregnant. What I used to patiently tolerate as difference I now see as intolerable bullshit. I keep startling myself by how quickly and firmly I pass judgments. It’s strange to witness myself changing like this.
It turns out that, like Eller, I’ve kept The Baby Book. Unlike her, I don’t have to hide it from myself. I just mine it for information and then put it right back on the shelf — the other day I read a couple of paragraphs and decided I didn’t need to worry that Bridget turns her toes in when she walks.
Your reading?
What do you think of The Baby Book? Best parenting advice ever? Dangerous moral propaganda for slavish adherence to attachment parenting? Or something in between?
Ooh ooh! I came across Eller’s essay recently and loved it. I too read the Baby Book. I took what I found helpful and left aside the rest. I find the Sears’ to be problematic. I generally agree with their parenting advice but find the tone and tenor of the writing to be condescending and oblivious to concerns of privilege. It’s written as if every mother is in a two parent home, the father has a job that can support the entire family, has copious amounts of maternity leave, and stereotypical gender roles. I am grateful that I can read critically to pick out the information that is useful, but I would not be surprised if many people rolled their eyes and never got past the first chapter.
Have you read ‘My Mother Wears Combat Boots’? It’s my favorite parenting book ever. I’ll have to write a review.
I haven’t read it, though I’ve heard that I should. I’d be interested to read your review.
The condescending tone towards fathers is a problem I have not only with The Baby Book, but with pretty much all mainstream parenting books. Not only do I find it insulting, but it does a greater disservice by unintentionally setting low expectations; the message conveyed is that Dad is doing an adequate job if he refrains from sharing his beer with the baby and doesn’t drop her on her head, and maybe changes the occasional diaper.
Thanks for providing a Dad’s perspective. Do you know any parenting books that don’t condescend to fathers this way?
The first time I read some of Sears I seem to have managed to filter out all the stereotypical gender roles assumptions. The second time I referred to a section of it I couldn’t believe I had read so much of it without putting it down in disgust! But there is good middle of the road advice (well, my version of middle of the road, anyway) and good attachment parenting stuff in there too.
I actually found the attitude of condescension about attachment parenting being the only way to go at least as annoying as the attitudes about gender roles in parenting. Often attachment parenting does seem like common sense to me, but the mix of “we have strong opinions about attachment parenting” and “we are writing a book that is styled like a general purpose baby reference manual” also got to me. It’s still on my bookshelf, though, as is the Sears breastfeeding book which was worth $1 at Goodwill.
I wound up using my doctor’s recommendation and getting a copy of the American Academy of Pediatrics “Caring For your Baby and Young Child From birth to age 5″ as our most generic and handy reference to look up medicine doses or info on some health or developmental issue. I’m sure it has its biases too, but as something you never sit down to read from cover to cover and that doesn’t profess to tell you how to parent, it works for me.
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