How Not to Repeat Your Parents’ Mistakes
A popular new book argues that parenthood should come with a trigger warning
Since its publication last March, the parenting guide The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did) has proven that it deserves its ambitious title. Authored by an English psychotherapist and advice columnist, Philippa Perry, the little book with the bright-orange cover has become an enduring and widely praised bestseller in the U.K. But on the heels of its U.S. release, it remains to be seen whether Perry’s brand of warm and wise — but emotionally challenging — advice will find an audience with American parents.
In the crowded field of American parenting literature, breakout titles tend to be those that connect family life to broader cultural controversies. Books like Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011) or Jennifer Senior’s All Joy and No Fun (2014) invite impassioned responses in the op-ed pages and around the dinner table. Alternatively, they frame child-rearing as baffling drudgery — in the vein of Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep or the stand-up routine Perry quotes at the beginning of her book that hinges on the notion that all parenting boils down to a daily battle to get kids dressed, fed, washed, and put to bed.
