I believe that if you’re going to invest your time and money in reading a parenting book, it should leave you feeling better than you did before — but not in an easy or cheap way, with ten steps or a “plan” for success. Instead, the best parenting books should make us feel better in a complicated, hard-truth way. We can’t really control things (like our kids), but at least we aren’t alone.
Parenting books, if they’re worth their salt (and most aren’t), tend to lead us back to ourselves and toward a reckoning with our own parentage. Stuff comes up. In this way, they’re a lot like parenting itself: We want to shape our children into something other than our own image (something better). Hoping for this is a trap, one that’s impossible to avoid.
The very best parenting books are better than the intentions we bring to them. The good ones are both consoling and challenging, reminding us that to be a parent who is present, and forgiving, and kind, you must first be all of these things to yourself. (Harder than you’d think.) The parenting books listed here are some of the best of the best.
