Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Stealth merchandising
Why is the venerable Scholastic book club company peddling cheesy toys in classrooms?
By Shoshana Marchand
[02/29/00]

Hooked on tutoring
After-school programs bleed Mom and Dad while dissing Junior's teachers.
By Catherine Davis
[02/29/00]

Babes in Willy Loman-land
Why does my kid have to sell stuff door-to-door for her school?
By Bob Whitby
[02/29/00]

What kind of mother are you?
Marketing mavens dissect moms for eager advertisers.
By Lisa Moskowitz
[02/28/00]

Shrinks and con men
An unholy alliance of psychologists and advertisers targets kiddie consumers.
By Arthur Allen
[02/28/00]

Complete archives for Mothers Who Think

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

The evidence is everywhere: support groups of mothers who devote their few minutes of free time each day to obsess over how long to breast-feed; e-mail buddies who fret exhaustively over the effectiveness of timeouts; daily online chats for parents of only children, large families, close-in-age siblings, circumcised boys and extra-tall girls; for Mormons, Catholics and practicing atheists.

Also Today Fear with a shot of vanity With a heady cocktail of safety and style, marketers capitalize on the insecurity and ignorance of new parents. By Pia Hinckle   The family for sale We take a week to examine the ravenous commercial forces that prey on us each day.

And everyone, everywhere, is buying parenting books. Millions of them.

Over the past half-century, child-care manuals have become one of the publishing industry's cash cows. Although no one keeps specific figures on parenting books alone (they're grouped with psychology/recovery titles, which sold 63 million copies in 1998), there are at least 10,000 titles in print. And with a bestseller such as "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" trumpeting "Over 2 million copies sold!" on its happy yellow cover, you can bet there aren't too many publishers losing money on the cuticle-chewing insecurity of America's parents.

Customer-savvy Amazon.com does such a rip-roaring business in parenting books that it has introduced a Parenting & Family section, including the Essential Bookshelf, Parenting Bestsellers and a featured "What We're Reading" selection. Among the site's thousands of titles, there are books on how to raise a moral child, a creative child, a joyful child, a responsible child, a sexually healthy child and an athletic child; on how to cope with spirited children, explosive children, strong-willed children, shy children, children with ADD (attention-deficit disorder) and ODD (oppositional defiance disorder, the newfangled term for kids who won't do what you tell them to do), children with special needs and children who are the siblings of children with special needs.

The books fall loosely into three categories: philosophies, operating manuals and buffet-style collections of tips.

The philosophies are based on the observations, opinions and experiences of someone who has at least (and sometimes only) minimal credentials, which are always ballyhooed on the back cover. Often, if the author has children, this also is mentioned to suggest that he or she, too, is in the trenches of parenthood. (Usually missing is any indication of how the author's children actually turned out.)

One of the hallmarks of the philosophies is the disingenuous caveat, which usually appears in the foreword, claiming the book offers no rules, plans or techniques, and that parents should follow their instincts or just use common sense.

In the foreword to "Attachment Parenting," author Katie Allison Granju asserts that the book is "fundamentally different" from other parenting books because the parents, in partnership with their child, are the "parenting experts." But if this were true, why would a parent need this book, or any other one?

The writers of the operating manuals, which always have upbeat titles like "8 Weeks to a Well-Behaved Child: A Failsafe Program for Toddlers Through Teens," dispense with all but the most rudimentary psychological information. They offer a method, a technique, a system that, if followed, will turn out exemplary children. In these books, the caveat in the introduction usually states that you must follow the program exactly.

In the "How to Use This Book" section of "1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12," author Thomas W. Phelan, Ph.D., says, "The methods must be used exactly as they are described here, especially with regard to the No-Talking and No-Emotion Rules." The subtext here is pernicious: If a child doesn't shape up, it's because the parent hasn't followed the method, not because it's impossible to raise human beings as if they were soufflés.

One current top seller among the operating manuals is the staggeringly comprehensive "The Educated Child: A Parent's Guide from Preschool through Eighth Grade" by the venerable William J. Bennett, secretary of education under Ronald Reagan. It's a terrifyingly huge tome whose only real purpose can be to flatten the corners of a poster. On Page 267 of 666 we are told that a first-grader should be able to talk about the use of color in Claude Monet's "Tulips in Holland." How can this be encouraging to anyone save a lifetime member of Mensa?

Next page | The point is to raise the visibility of the author