Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice | James Lileks

Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice | James Lileks | How did children survive the 1950's :0)

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Mommy Knows Worst:...

	Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice James Lileks Three Rivers Press, 2005 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Don?t throw out the baby with the bathwater!

Ahhhh, the 1940s and ?50s . . . a time when parents everywhere strove for the American Dream?manicured lawns, a shiny car in the driveway, and perfect children playing in the yard. Raising kids was simpler back then, or was it?

In Mommy Knows Worst, you?ll be treated to a visual feast of past parenting neuroses?as well as insight into why concerned moms and dads were driven to buy ?delicious? baby laxatives, douse their baby in oil and put him in the sun, and strap Junior into a car seat that bore a strange resemblance to scrap metal. If you?re a baby boomer who lived through this childhood torture, well, we?re sorry. But if humor really is the best medicine (rather than bicarbonate of curd and mustard plaster, as was previously recommended for childhood ailments), then Mommy Knows Worst is cheaper than therapy.

Photographs, advertisements, magazine articles, and government-issue parenting guides, which seemed so helpful in their day, are given a whole new slant by the master of the genre, James Lileks. Mommy Knows Worst is a rollicking tribute to old-fashioned parenting that gives us a whole new reason not to forget our past?it?s hilarious!

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Hilarious

I loved this book. I will personally be buying it for any friend or family member who is expecting. It would make a great gift for any parent who has read "What to Expect" type books.

How did children survive the 1950's :0)

I absolutely loved this book. Not many books make me laugh out loud, but this one kept me in stitches. I even passed it around work to all the mothers I work with, and they all said the same thing "how the hell did we survive". Definitely a new fan of Mr. Lileks. This book would make a great gift for any new mom :0)

Somehow we all survived our childhood

James Lileks is one of this era's masters of comedic commentary. Unlike old whats his face (Dave Berry, Erma Bombeck, et. al.) who writes comedy, Lileks excels at quips, naming conventions, and often times finding cultural jewels that beg for recogition after years on the great trash heap of disposable ephemeria. He is a wit of great talent.

Mommy Knows Worst is collection of child raising items and nostrums that mothers have believed, practiced, purchased for us, their children since the turn of the 20th Century. If any of us tried us some of things on our children (like the bare metal car seat that leasurely drapes over the passenger seat) we'd have children's services at our door step!

Lileks point is, especially if you are a babyboomer, however horrid some of these examples are, our parents used them on us and well we're here, aren't we?

Lileks other talent is planting a quip where you least expect it, and realize, he's right. In one illustration from an accepted mothering text, a mother from 1930s is giving her infant an enema. The mother holds the babys legs up in the air and is delivering the enema with tiny bottle, while this baby is peacefully looking at something off camera. Lileks starts his commentary by simply stating of all the times for baby to be easily distracted, this isn't one of them. He's right - if it were any of us we'd be screaming our heads off!

ANd thats what I like about James Lileks - he can go from the sublime to the outragous in the turn of the page and it works.

This book is a hoot and I like it much better then Interior Desecrations.

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Mommy Knows Worst

This is one of the funniest books I have read. I grew up during this period and agree with the author that "it's a miracle Dick and Jane survived." You will laugh until you cry. It is a fun book that can be passed on to your own children.

Another winner!

Another winner for James Lileks, whose work is hilarious, bordering on hysterical. Even after having read this and other works of Mr. Lileks before, when I read them again, I cannot stop laughing. Do check out his website, too. It's just as funny.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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