The title of Lindsay Powers's parenting book You Can't F*ck Up Your Kids: A Judgment-Free Guide to Stress-Free Parenting might be a little misleading. You can, after all, "f*ck up your kids" (according to Powers, by smoking while pregnant, skipping vaccines and neglecting, abusing or starving your children). And anything that promises truly "stress-free" parenting should probably be viewed with a hint of skepticism. Title aside, however, Powers's book is a powerful one, reminding anxious parents that, "loving, feeding, and housing your child will lead them to become a happy and healthy person."
During her tenure as editor-in-chief of Yahoo! Parenting, Powers saw first-hand the ways today's "hyper-connected world" could manipulate parents' "worst fears and neuroses," resulting in stressed-out adults desperate to find the perfect way to parent their precious children. But her experience as a mother of two, along with a comprehensive review of existing research, suggested that the decisions parents worry about the most (e.g., breastfeeding vs. formula, daycare vs. a stay-at-home parent, sleep training vs. co-sleeping) are often the ones least likely to matter in the long run.
There is no shortage of how-to parenting books promising the perfect solution to whatever challenges your kids throw your way: not sleeping, refusing to eat vegetables, biting other toddlers, overdosing on screen time. You Can't F*ck Up Your Kids doesn't offer answers to such specific questions (though Powers does include high-level overviews of the research around each issue, along with many others). Instead, it serves as both a reminder and invitation to slow down, stress less and remind yourself that you're doing the best you can--and that's ultimately what matters most to the little ones in your life. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm