8 Parenting Books That Are Worth Reading

When you’re a parent, you live and die by your daily routine. Everyday activities like preparing lunches, helping your kids get their shoes on, or buckling a baby into a car seat with one hand add up to a carefully orchestrated performance you repeat every 24 hours.

Because mundane tasks take more time and energy as a parent, it’s easy to become isolated in your family’s microcosm. Our schedules become the culture in which we live, and we have little mental currency to spend on thoughts outside of our family and our jobs.

But, in reality, we’re part of a larger culture of parenting and parenthood. The decisions we make—the caregivers we hire (or don’t), the meals we prepare for our infants, the way we discipline our teenagers—are all informed by cultural cues we’ve internalized since we were children ourselves. Although it may feel like you and your partner are flying by the seat of your pants, figuring out how to be parents on a minute-by-minute basis, your decisions are strongly affected by an ongoing social conversation about what makes a good father, a good mother, and a successfully “raised” child. Read more...