10 Best Books For First Time Parents
Updated on: September 2023
Best Books For First Time Parents in 2023
What to Expect the First Year
The Sh!t No One Tells You: A Guide to Surviving Your Baby's First Year (Sh!t No One Tells You (1))
The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance (Owner's and Instruction Manual)
Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide
We're Parents! The New Dad Book for Baby's First Year: Everything You Need to Know to Survive and Thrive Together
What to Expect When You're Expecting
We're Pregnant! The First Time Dad's Pregnancy Handbook
50 Things to Do Before You Deliver: The First Time Moms Pregnancy Guide
Newborn 101: Secrets from Expert Nurses on Preparing and Caring for Your Baby at Home
Raising Baby: A Pocket Guide to Baby's 1st Year
Parenting Books You Can't Live Without
My favorite books about parenting - books I can't live without.
Okay, perhaps I really can live without my favorite parenting books - but they have supplied me with plenty of valuable information and for that I am grateful. The parenting books I enjoy the most tend to be upbeat celebrations of parenthood. Sure, parenting isn't always easy and there are plenty of challenges for us all, but I choose to see parenting as a positive thing to be enjoyed and savored. Some of the books that I've really enjoyed over the years have been:
Alfie Kohn - Unconditional Parenting: Moving From Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason. A happy and celebratory book on treating children as individuals and, as the title suggests, treating them with love and reason rather than setting up strict guidelines for them to follow and/or disciplining them. I quite like the idea of allowing children to develop their own discipline which will only help them later on in life.
Peggy O'Mara - Natural Family Living: The Mothering Magazine Guide to Parenting. For all attachment parenting families out there, this book is like a bible of sorts. An enthusiastic romp through all aspects of parenting, I love Peggy's approach.
La Leche League International- The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. This is a wonderful, wonderful book and highly recommended for all breastfeeding mothers out there. It goes well beyond breastfeeding too and touches on ideas of gentle discipline and love and respect for all family members.
Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn - Everday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. From the authors of the famous book Wherever You Go, There You Are, this book talks about being in the moment with your child and slowing down and really living life. So many of us are always on the go and rarely stop to really be there both physically and mentally with their child. This book can help with that.
Barbara Barron-Tieger - Nurture By Nature: Understand Your Child's Personality Type and Become A Better Parent. For anyone who is interested in the work of David Keirsey and/or the work of Myers-Briggs, this book is a must. As a true INTJ, I can really appreciate this book. I may not know what my child's personality type is right now, but certainly there are plenty of signals as to whether he's a sensor or an intuitive, a feeler or a judger etc. I truly wish my parents had owned this book when I was a child as my own personality type is ever so rare.
Dr. William Sears - The Attachment Parenting Book. For anybody interested in learning more about attachment parenting, this is the book for you. Written in a non-judgmental manner, Dr. Sears guides the new (or already acquainted) parent through the style known as attachment parenting, a sort of back-to-nature approach relying on love and plenty of togetherness - and tenderness!
Dr. Robert Mendelsohn - How To Raise A Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor. You can probably guess just by the title what this book is about already. If you're the type that's jittery at the prospect of your child running even the most minor of fevers, do yourself a favor and read this book.
Paula Yates - The Fun Starts Here and The Fun Don't Stop. Two wonderful books about the joys of parenting. The second one has many different activity ideas for children and I've used quite a lot of them over the years.
