American Parent
My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Part memoir, part journalism, part history, part downright strange and hilarious, American Parent takes readers on a unique tour of the world of new mothers and fathers. As Sam Apple embarks on his own journey into parenthood, he decides to put his background in journalism to good use by talking to a wide range of experts. Along the way, Apple visits with the mohel who circumcised him, enters a trance with a childbirth hypnotist, goes on a stakeout with a nanny spy, and attends a lecture on Botox for new mothers. Apple is full of questions, and none is left unexplored: Is the Lamaze method a Stalinist plot? (Yes.) Are newborns really fetuses that are born too soon? (Sort of.) Is there a universal theory that can explain the origins of circumcision in many diverse cultures? (Maybe.) Does it sting when you pour baby shampoo into your own eyes? (Big–time!)
And yet for all the unusual twists in this story—at one point Apple fantasizes about a father losing his mind and refusing to remove his BabyBjörn—the strangest twist of all might be that at its core American Parent is a deeply serious and personal book about the way emotionally vulnerable and confused new parents can get lost in the increasingly complex labyrinth of baby products, classes, and fads.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lest new parents forget the age-old reasoning behind choosing baby names, circumcision and infant sleep training, journalist Apple (Schlepping Through the Alps) gathers some helpful, not terribly groundbreaking but pleasantly humorous information for clueless, fully participatory first-time fathers. After dispensing in the first chapters with the hard-sell commodities market offered by "the baby industrial complex" (with his own wife several months pregnant, Apple admits to a kind of personal identity crisis when trying on the BabyBjorn at a mega baby store), the author regards the various rituals of child birthing and raising in these snappy essays with a fresh, healthy skepticism. He wonders (without pursuing very deeply) whether the naming of a child brings happiness or grief. He takes a look at some of the labor-easing efforts that have emerged over the decades, such as water birth, Lamaze and hypnosis, and their histories and debatable rates of success. (Readers might be amazed to learn that the so-called Lamaze method originated in Soviet Russia as a way to avoid the use of pain medication.) As part of his unorthodox hands-on research, he tracks down his own mohel (a Jewish circumciser, nicknamed the Yankee Clipper) and accompanies the founder of a nanny-surveillance outfit on a stakeout. Throughout these instructive essays, Apple maintains a calm, bemused tone.
