Baby Books Won’t Make Us Parenting Einsteins

According to the stack of baby books on my nightstand my wife and I are going to be such horrible parents that next to us Joan Crawford will win the Mother of the Year Award.

This is our first child so we’re reading a lot of these baby advice books.

Right now we really don’t know what to expect other than what we’ve seen in numerous television sitcoms: a comedic madcap rush to the hospital in a taxicab driven by someone wearing a turban and speaking in broken English, lots of screaming, a bunch of fun-loving witty comments by the doctor (played by Robin Williams) and someone insisting that we start boiling water.

To write a baby book all you need is one simple concept and the ability to restate that concept with amusing anecdotal stories for the next 220 pages. For example, a book about how to feed your baby really only has one rule: “Feed your baby every 3 hours.” But it won’t sell unless you give it a snappy title and write ten chapters worth of rubbish all more or less pointing to that concept.

It’s a cookbook!

Title: The Foolproof Perfect Mother’s Super Method for Baby Feeding
Chapter 1: How This Book Came About
Chapter 2: How We Discovered This Revolutionary New Method
Chapter 3: How Babies Respond To This Revolutionary New Method
Chapter 4: Wrong Ways To Feed A Baby
Chapter 5: How To Feed A Baby
Chapter 6: Questions About How To Feed A Baby
Chapter 7: Stories of Astounding Success From Mothers Who Have Used This Revolutionary New Method
Chapter 8: Stories of Baby Deaths From Mothers Who Have Not Used This Revolutionary New Method
Chapter 9: Other Scientists Who Have Letters After Their Names and Agree with Us
Chapter 10: Charts No One Really Knows How to Read

The idea here is that you’ll get so tired of reading the book that you’ll immediately throw it away in frustration the moment you don’t need it. This forces you to buy the book again when you have another baby two years later.

All of these books are written as though there is only one Universal Baby Truth and if you question anything in the book then you are now the parenting equivalents of what would happen if Hitler and Skeletor decided to adopt a child together.

Here’s a sample passage from one book:

“To hush your crying baby you should pick it up as prehistoric women did. If you allow your baby to continue to cry it will surely think you don’t love it, will probably grow up to deal drugs or run a whorehouse over on the bad side of town and will almost definitely vote Republican.”

The next book has slightly conflicting words of wisdom:

“You should only sooth your crying baby if you are a baby-hating monster who wants nothing more than to destroy your child’s life and lead him or her into the depraved life of a shoe salesman or professional blogger.”

Anyone can write a baby advice book.

Many of these books have whole sections dedicated to important topics like Choosing A Nursery Color, Your Baby’s New Liver or How To Blow Your Nose When You’re Pregnant. I fully expect to come across a chapter which tells me I should not, under any circumstances, Leave The Baby on the Roof or Let The Baby Drive the Car After Dusk.

Unfortunately none of these books provide the information you really want. In chapter 12 you’re reading about packing your bags and getting ready to go to the hospital and then, magically, in chapter 13 you’re holding your little one for the first time and reading all about feeding and changing diapers filled with chocolate pudding.

I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure something fairly important happens in between going to the hospital and dealing with poo. I think it’s called “birth” but I’ll have to double-check.

My wife and I will continue to read these books and to compare notes with one another. A lot of these books are so poorly written that I’m not even bothering to read the last couple of chapters. I still feel pretty prepared for the time when my wife goes into labor and I finally get to ask the obstetrician:

“Okay…the baby comes out of where now?!?”