Our favorite books to learn how to enrich your most rewarding (and maddening!) connections in life.
Family means so many things to so many people. No matter your relationships, or what family means to you, there’s no way around it: It can be hard! We could all sometimes (always?) use a little help managing them. When a new voice with profoundly helpful ideas and insight comes onto the family advice scene, we sit up and pay attention. Here are a few of those voices, sharing some fantastic advice and guidance to help you keep close to the heart and soul of your family.
Raising Securely Attached Kids: Using Connection-Focused Parenting to Create Confidence, Empathy, and Resilience
by Eli Harwood
A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
*Winner of the Child Psychology Award for Literary Excellence*
"A comprehensive roadmap for parents who want to raise securely attached, emotionally healthy children. A parenting must-read." –Alyssa Blask Campbell, M.Ed., author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions
"Eli Harwood teaches the essentials of attachment, which can help parents 'show up' in ways that enable our children to become securely attached to us." –Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., New York Times bestselling co-author of The Whole-Brain Child
Though there have been countless studies on how attachment styles affect our romantic relationships, Raising Securely Attached Kids is the first book to reframe the subject for caregivers and children.
Licensed therapist and highly sought-after attachment research expert Eli Harwood illuminates the science that explores our innate human need to bond with other humans, and helps us harness it as the only parenting approach proven to have a lasting impact. Her loyal following – fast approaching the millions – connects to Eli's accessible approach that helps everyone form secure and close relationships with their kids, which helps them develop resilience, confidence, and form close relationships in the future.
Hopeful and inspiring, this essential evidence-based guide shows parents, educators, and anyone with children in their lives that they are not alone in the questions and concerns they may have about raising confident, capable, and caring kids.
Covering every parenting era from newborns to adults, Raising Securely Attached Kids teaches simple, real-life strategies.
Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting
by Janet Lansbury
Janet Lansbury's advice on respectful parenting is quoted and shared by millions of readers worldwide. Inspired by the pioneering parenting philosophy of her friend and mentor, Magda Gerber, Janet's influential voice encourages parents and child care professionals to perceive babies as unique, capable human beings with natural abilities to learn without being taught; to develop motor and cognitive skills; communicate; face age appropriate struggles; initiate and direct independent play for extended periods; and much more.
Once we are able to view our children in this light, even the most common daily parenting experiences become stimulating opportunities to learn, discover, and to connect with our child. Elevating Child Care is a collection of 30 popular and widely read articles from Janet's website that focus on some of the most common infant/toddler issues: eating, sleeping, diaper changes, communication, separation, focus and attention span, creativity, boundaries, and more. Eschewing the quick-fix 'tips and tricks' of popular parenting culture, Janet's insightful philosophy lays the foundation for a closer, more fulfilling parent/child relationship, and children who grow up to be authentic, confident, successful adults.
The 5 Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans
by Aliza Pressman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Let go of perfect and become a transformative, positive influence in a child's life while creating your own definition of success from developmental psychologist and podcaster Dr. Aliza Pressman.
"My go-to for how we all raise good humans, including ourselves!" –Drew Barrymore
In the age of high-pressure parenting, when so many of us feel like we've got to get everything exactly right the first time, Dr. Aliza Pressman is the compassionate, reassuring expert we all need – and the one whose advice we can all use. Already beloved by listeners of hit podcast, Raising Good Humans, Dr. Pressman distills it all with a handful of strategies every parent can use to get things right often enough: Relationship, Reflection, Regulation, Rules, and Repair.
The 5 Principles of Parenting doesn't presume to tell you how to parent with "my way is right" advice because the science is clear: There's no one "right" way to raise good humans. No matter how you were raised, how your coparent behaves, or how your kids have been parented up until now, you can start using The 5 Principles of Parenting to chart a manageable course for raising good humans that's aligned with your own values and with your children's unique temperaments. Whether you're in the trenches with a toddler or a tween (because spoiler alert: the tantrums of childhood mirror the tantrums of adolescence), it's never too late to learn to use these 5 principles to reparent yourself and help your kids build the resilience they need to thrive. Through practice and normalizing imperfection, along the way you'll discover the person you're ultimately raising is yourself. By becoming more intentional people, we become better parents. By becoming better parents, we become better people. Let's get started.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
by Jonathan Haidt
THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech – and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.
"Erudite, engaging, combative, crusading." –New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Words that chill the parental heart . . . thanks to Mr. Haidt, we can glimpse the true horror of what happened not only in the U.S. but also elsewhere in the English-speaking world . . . lucid, memorable . . . galvanizing." –Wall Street Journal
"[An] important new book . . . The shift in kids' energy and attention from the physical world to the virtual one, Haidt shows, has been catastrophic, especially for girls." –Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times
After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?
In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the "play-based childhood" began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the "phone-based childhood" in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this "great rewiring of childhood" has interfered with children's social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the "collective action problems" that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.
Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes – communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children – and ourselves – from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.
Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood
by Lucy Jones
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION - From the acclaimed author of Losing Eden ("Powerful, beautifully written" –Anthony Doerr) an important, moving, passionate and passionately written inquiry – personal and scientific – into what happens mentally, spiritually, physically, during the process of becoming a mother, from pregnancy and childbirth to early motherhood and what this profound process tells us about the way we live now.
"I read your book, or more accurately devoured it! Loved it . . . It will be the new classic text in Motherhood Studies." –Andrea O'Reilly, founder, Motherhood Studies
"The best book I've ever read about motherhood. Matrescence is essential reading, bloody and alive, roaring and ready to change conversations." –Jude Rogers, The Observer (UK)
In this important and groundbreaking, deeply personal investigation, Jones writes of the emerging concept of "matrescence" – the wholeness of becoming a mother.
Drawing on her own experiences of twice becoming a mother, as well as exploring the latest research in the fields of neuroscience and evolutionary biology; psychoanalysis and existential therapy; sociology, economics and ecology, Jones writes of the physical and emotional changes in the maternal mind, body, and spirit and shows us how these changes are far more profound, wild, and enduring than have been previously explored or written about.
Part memoir, part scientific and health reporting, part social critique, ecological philosophy, eco-feminism and nature writing, Matrescence is a kind of whodunnit, ferreting out with the most nuanced, searing and honest observations, why mothers throughout this heightened transition are at a breaking point, and what the institution of intensive, isolated motherhood can tell us about our still-dominant social and cultural myths.
You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers: The Nami Guide to Navigating Your Child's Mental Health
by Christine M Crawford
"You are Not Alone is the beacon of hope parents and caregivers need . . . . Every physician and mental health provider should keep copies of this book to give parents when these issues arise; the insights and hope this book provides will be a powerful tool in the provider's therapeutic toolkit." –Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., author, with Oprah Winfrey, of the New York Times #1 bestseller What Happened to You: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing
"Makes the complex world of children's mental health accessible to all while uplifting the voices and experiences of real parents and caregivers." –Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author and host of the On Purpose podcast
The perfect follow-up to You Are Not Alone: a guide for parents, educators, caregivers, and mental health professionals on how to navigate mental healthcare for the young people in their lives.
A growing number of children and teens in the U.S. are struggling with mental health conditions, but parents, teachers, and other caregivers are often at a loss when concerns arise for their own child. Are your preschooler's constant tantrums typical for their age, or an indication of a developmental difficulty? Is puberty or depression to blame for your pre-teen's challenging behavior? Is my child in the wrong school, or being influenced by the wrong friends? Am I a bad parent or teacher, or am I overreacting? What exactly should I do?
In You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers, child psychiatrist and NAMI's Associate Medical Director Dr. Christine M. Crawford provides a comprehensive, compassionate, and practical resource for anyone concerned about a child's mental health. Drawing on her own clinical experience and guidance from leading experts, Dr. Crawford provides a lens through which to understand the many complex factors affecting children's mental health. Analyzing young people from preschool to high school, she shares insights into how mental health conditions may manifest at different ages, what kind of interventions may be necessary, and what to do to help kids thrive. Throughout, the book channels the collective wisdom of the NAMI community. Parents, caregivers, and young people themselves share personal stories about their paths to recovery, ensuring readers know that they are not alone.
Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity
by Ruth Whippman
Combining painfully honest memoir, cultural analysis, and reporting, BoyMom is a humorous and heartbreaking deep dive into the complexities of raising boys in our fraught political moment.
"Rapist, school-shooter, incel, man-child, interrupter, mansplainer, boob-starer, birthday forgetter, frat boy, dude-bro, homophobe, self-important stoner, emotional-labor abstainer, non-wiper of kitchen counters. Trying to raise good sons suddenly felt like a hopeless task."
As the culture wars rage, and masculinity has been politicized from all sides, feminist writer and mother of three boys Ruth Whippman finds herself conflicted and scared. While the right pushes a dangerous vision of fantasy manhood, her feminist peers often dismiss boys as little more than entitled predators-in-waiting. Meanwhile her home life feels like a daily confrontation with the triumph of nature over nurture.
With young men in the grip of a loneliness epidemic and dying by suicide at a rate of nearly four times their female peers, Whippman asks: How do we raise our sons to have a healthy sense of self without turning them into privileged assholes? How can we find a feminism that holds boys to a higher standard but still treats them with empathy? And what do we do when our boys won't cooperate with our plans?
Whippman digs into the impossibly contradictory pressures boys now face; and the harmful blind spots of male socialization that are leaving boys isolated, emotionally repressed, and adrift. Feminist gonzo-style, she spends months interviewing incels, reports on a conference for boys accused of sexual assault; crashes at a residential therapy center for young men in Utah, talks to a wide range of psychologists and other experts, and gets boys of all backgrounds to open up about sex, consent, porn, body image, mental health, cancel culture, screens, friendship and loneliness. Along the way, she finds her simple certainties about male privilege seriously challenged.
With wit, honesty, and a refusal to settle for easy answers, BoyMom charts a new path to give boys a healthier, more expansive, and fulfilling story about their own lives.
I Will Do Better: A Father's Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love
by Charles Bock
By turns comical and heartbreaking, I Will Do Better is the remarkable journey of two defiant and wounded people, and their personal growth in the name of love.
Named one of the Best Books of Fall by Oprah Daily and People
"A uniquely forthright and powerful addition to the literature of fatherhood." (Kirkus)
The novelist Charles Bock was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of a writing career.
But when his daughter Lily was six months old, his wife, Diana, was diagnosed with a complex form of leukemia. Two and half years later, when all treatments and therapies had been exhausted, Bock found himself a widower – devastated, drowning in medical bills, and saddled with a daunting responsibility. He had to nurture Lily, and, somehow, maybe even heal himself.
I Will Do Better is Charles's pull-no-punches account of what happened next. Playdates, music classes, temper tantrums, oh-so-cool babysitters, first days at school, family reunions, single-parent dating, and a citywide crippling natural disaster – were minefields especially treacherous for Charles and Lily because of their preexisting vulnerability: their grief.
Charles sought help from friends, family, and therapists, but this overgrown, middle-aged boy-man and his plucky child became, foremost, a duo – they found their way together.
This frank and tender memoir of parenting his infant daughter in the wake of of his wife's untimely death is "bracingly honest [and] tender," commented Publshers Weekly. “Single parents will find much to identify with in this warts-and-all account.”