How To Ruin A Child

A journey into the alarming, hilarious and ever-changing advice given to Australian parents.

‘Funny, intelligent and very useful - it will make you trust yourself more and relax into the moment with your kids, which is what they need most’ — Steve Biddulph

‘A parenting book where you get to laugh out loud. Every parent deserves to read it’ — Madonna King

‘Ridiculously funny and breathtakingly profound, this book is the present every new parent needs’ — Rebecca Sparrow

‘This brilliantly written, forensically researched, laugh out loud lampooning of parenting manuals should be a mandatory gift in every maternity ward’ — Kathy Lette

‘Raising kids has always been confusing and hard, and Richard Glover's exploration of advice for parents over the last century is fascinating and sometimes devastating to read. I especially love his top 20 tips for parents today - full of compassion and common sense’ — Maggie Dent

‘Richard Glover gets parenting right in this book. You can trust me. I'm an expert!’ — Justin Coulson

Behind every generation of Australian mothers and fathers has stood an army of advisers - magazine columnists, expert authors, nurses, priests, and government agencies. Most of those experts were very certain about their own rules. Any deviation would produce a dire result: you'd ruin a child.

Yet, over time, the advice kept changing. Each generation was told that the last generation had it all wrong. How peculiar that most of the experts did not have children of their own.

And, for the current generation of parents, history offers a consolation. When relatives, and other critics, tell young parents that they are 'doing it all wrong', and that different (usually stricter) methods would make everything go smoothly, the experience of Australian parents over time is wonderfully reassuring. Parenting is tough, however you do it, and the outcome, however you do it, is usually a perfectly fine human.