Parenting

I first read this book as part of a moms study group, and it was excellent fodder for discussion. The text is full of reality checks and encourages us to be honest with ourselves and others. The author attacks what she terms the "perfection infection," which certainly hit home for me as a long-time perfectionist.

I had a ton of fun with this book. The best part of making baby food is that it almost always turns out perfect (that's mostly down to the fact that you're going to puree it, so accomplishing the finer points of cooking technique -- not so crucial in the end). The second best part is the colors: deep blues from berries, bright aqua from edamame, the richest shade of orange you can imagine from carrots. Oh, and did I fail to mention this part: It's also good for baby!

This is a really fun book. It'll challenge your culturally-defined assumptions of how parenting should be done. (Did you even know that much of what you believe to be "right" parenting is derived from your culture and often is thought of as wrong in other countries? Consider co-sleeping, for example.) Writing from a U.S. perspective, the author compares American parents' strategies, goals and habits to the norms of other countries in the areas of sleeping, feeding and teaching.