10 Best Parenting Books To Read

When it comes to family life, everyone strives to figure out how the relationship between parents and children can become ideal. Maybe these book list will help you have that wonderful idea how to become the best parent there is. 

1.   Your Two-Year-Old by Louise Bates Ames & Frances L     This is book is part of a series of the best little books about child development. They’re all actually little — about 150 pages (a third of which are black-and-white photo illustrations of children from the ‘70s) — and follow the same general formula: here’s what you’re dealing with, here’s what tends to work, isn’t it fascinating!, do what works and it will get better soon. I goddamn love them.

2.     All Joy and No Fun by Jennifer SeniorThis book is a great answer to every time you’ve ever wondered, “Is it just me, or is being a parent bad in a very particular way right now?” A leading question, maybe, but Senior has convinced me that the answer is “Yes.” Inspiring either a consoling self-forgiveness or a maddening fire under one’s ass (both, one hopes), former New York staff writer Senior winningly leads us through the world of modern parenthood with both depth and breadth, in a voice that is insightful, relatable, and genuinely searching.

 3.     Simplicity Parenting by Kim John PayneThis book is a classic parent troll, so you’ll need to be ready for that. Read it at a time of emotional fortitude, ideally at a moment when you think to yourself, “Okay, things are about to get easier soon. I feel like I can finally catch my breath. Is there a man somewhere who can Kondo my family life?” (The author’s first name is Kim and yes, I felt betrayed when I realized he was in fact an Australian man and not a Scandinavian woman sent to share the gospel of toys made from natural wood.) 

4.     No Bad Kids by Janet Lansbury A couple of my mom friends and I simply refer to her as “the guru” and I still don’t know if we’re joking or not. Her popular books are self-published compendiums of some of her best blog posts (when I filled out the contact form on her website to request a review copy, I got a prompt reply from Michael L., who introduced himself as “Janet’s husband and Mailroom Supervisor”). Lansbury’s general approach or “philosophy” is that we should treat children with respect, and, whenever possible, try to meet them where they are.

 5.     Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber and Elaine MazlishThe way we argue, what we value, our level of competitiveness, the amount and kind of guilt we possess — so much of our identities are determined by the crapshoot of sibling dynamics. This proved to be fertile ground for Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, the authors of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen … The authors’ book on siblings has the same instructive cartoons, the same entertaining group-therapy frame, and a similar unwillingness to sacrifice depth at the altar of the digestible message.

6.     Queenbees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman This book served as the inspiration and source material for Tina Fey’s Mean Girls. Whether that serves as disclaimer or recommendation is up to you. Queen Bees seems to meet teens on their level, which is probably what makes it so effective (if not occasionally alarmist, or maybe that’s the super Christian nerd in me talking?).

  7.     NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman This book is the ultimate compendium of magazine-style counterintuitive parenting-trend pieces. “Why our instincts about children can be so off the mark,” its marketing copy argues, promising real data and the always-beguiling shattering of conventional wisdom. I don’t mean to sound dismissive, as NurtureShock is both a great read and manages to make its points without trafficking in parental anxiety. If anything, the book — with chapters on kids needing more sleep, being praised too much, labeled gifted too early — seems to argue that it’s our own misplaced agita that causes problems. 

 8.    Supernormal by Meg JayIf you haven’t noticed or made fun of them yet, parenting culture’s trendiest desired attributes are GRIT and RESILIENCE. Grit is, of course, the goofier of the two, evocative of both dirt and a southern breakfast food. But who doesn’t want to be resilient? Who doesn’t want their children to be?With this book, longtime clinical psychologist Meg Jay challenges us to interrogate our assumptions about resilience, to grapple with what’s really going on inside a kid we want to praise for overcoming adversity. Children adapt well, almost too well in some cases, and the coping skills that help children survive may be the ones preventing them from relating as adults.

9.     The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk This one is not about parenting per se, but my experience with childbirth left me mildly traumatized in ways I only truly understood after reading this book. I feel better for having read it, and better equipped, as a parent and a citizen, to see the way trauma — beyond the buzzword — is at work in so many of our experiences.

10.The Philosophical Baby by Alison GopnikRead Gopnik’s earlier book as A reminder that children give as much as they get, and not just because they’re cute. Gopnik brings us on a tour of the awakening consciousness of babies and shows us how much we can learn about the essential questions of human nature by looking to the small, screaming friends we are trying our best to keep alive.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent but you can be the best one for your child if you'd want to. 

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