Books I Recommend

Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry
by Lenore Skenazy.
The book that started the movement! A funny, factual look at how we became so worried about our kids, and how to dial back the fears.

A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting
by Hara Marano
How we are making our children emotionally fragile by doing too much for them.

Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence
by Robert Epstein
How society has taken away teens’ ability to join adult society in a productive way and replaced it with adolescence.

The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t—and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger
by Daniel Gardner
How and why our brains process information wrong when it comes to risk.

Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America
by Philip Howard
How ever more excessive worries about “What if?” have lead us to unnecessary laws instead of compassion, common sense and self-reliance.

Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child
by Frank Furedi
First book I read about the direction parenting was going. He was onto the helicopter parenting phenom before it had a name.

The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Revised and Updated
by Judith Harris
One reason parents are so nervous is because we think we can mold every aspect of our children. Harris says it’s mostly up to genes.

Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex
by Judith Levine
How our desire to protect children from sex has led to corrosive beliefs, restrictions and verdicts

Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt
by Debbie Nathan
Chronicling the “satanic panic” about satanic sexual abuse in childcare centers in the 1980s.

The Case For Make Believe: Saving Play in a Commercialized World
by Susan Linn
What happens when all the toys are licensed characters, and all free time is gone?

Parenting, Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children
by Pamela Paul
Keen look at the baby product — and baby class — industry.

Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media…
by John Stossel

Is Breast Best?: Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood (Biopolitics Medicine Technosci)
by Jeanne Wolf
Dispassionately examines the evidence for breastfeeding and dares to wonder why it all sounds the same.

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