Perfect Parents: Baby-care advice past and present

The best way to counteract the anxiety induced by reading too many baby-care books is to take a detached look at the staggering range of advice mothers have been given over the last two and a half centuries.Christina Hardyment provides a much-needed new perspective on the whole perplexing business, showing that not only has the advice given always been subject to the prevailing fashions and to the personal quirks of their authors, but also that the books have had a hand in provoking the anxieties theyset out to quell.It's all here: from James B. Watson's admonitions about physical contact ('Never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning.') to Jean Liedloff's insistence that babies should be keptphysically attached to their mothers until they positively struggle to get away; the exhortations, the warnings, the assurances on everything from the breast to the potty.Perfect Parents is an absolutely superb slice of social history - extraordinary, riveting, hair-raising, funny, and - ultimately - wonderfully reassuring.