American Parent

Categories: Parenting & Families , Nonfiction

As a new parent, I find myself in situations so foreign I might as well be the first human on Mars. The sheer volume of things we must do (baby swim class?) and not do (don't even get me started here...) is nearly incomprehensible.

In American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland, author Sam Apple documents his own journey into parenthood.

Apple is full of questions, and no theory 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 geographically diverse cultures? (Maybe.) Does it sting when you pour baby shampoo into your own eyes? (Big time!)

And yet, despite the laugh out loud moments (he really does pour baby shampoo into his eys), at its heart is a personal narrative about the confusion, anxiety, and sheer emotion of new parenthood. Like an anthropologist studying a unknown culture, Apple immerses himself in the baby industrial complex- studying the roots of the increasingly complex maze of infant products, class, and trends, all of which offer both lofty promises of developmental achievement and veiled threats (wth a side order of parental guilt) of failure.

He examines how parenthood has evolved and the research behind what society tells new parents they must have/do. When did we become so achievement-obsessed and product-oriented? What is the history of Hypnobirthing? What’s the science behind Attachment Parenting?

It’s part memoir, part journalism, part history, but always hilarious.  And as Joel Stein commented in his review, “It’s reassuring to know there's someone doing the same stupid things as me.”