why are we buying "how to parent" books?

[giddy1]

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I liked the NCT sleep book - which gave you suggestions (many of them) and basically said that the best solutions were the ones you were happy with! Other than that, my standard way of approaching things both whilst pregnant and after ds was born was to ask myself what a 'wild' human would do.....and adapt to modern circumstances.
It worked for me, although the midwives and HV thought I was mad!

I suspect a lot of the books were first written when the internet was not so popular and there was nothing like mumsnet. If you read different books, you get different view points (similar to MN) and you can take what you want/leave what you don't like. I agree with what mamamana said that more often than not, people don't have much in the way of extended family. Not only that, but families are smaller so more people have no exposure to young babies until they have their own. I'd certainly never held a baby until ds arrived, so had no practical knowledge about what to do and, because my Mum had me 30 odd years ago, she can't really remember either! So, I think parenting books serve a useful purpose...

Never bought one actually. Think mainly because it is bound to be a lot of very general stuff and the examples they do cite may have no real relevance to my situation, so don't see much point in them. I can't stand any of those "change your life, get a positive outlook, become a new you, set your goal" type manuals.

However I may well write one!

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I quite like reading some books. I really liked the baby whisperer personally. When was nothing like I imaged (tracy hogg) when she did the tv shows. Such a shame she died. I like to gather information and then make my own choices.

ironically I say away from anything that was extremely disciplined when I was researching my books.

agree with you giddy1. actually I like having other people's insight, I don't always assume that I know best.

I think it may be because society has changed quite radically it a very short space of time and extended families & close knit communities aren't what they once were [rose tinted glasses emoticons ]

I also think it's capitalism/comsumerism If we are told we need it enough, we will believe we need it

I'll tell you what makes me insecure and its not reading books. Its reading people on mumsnet implying that I should know how to be a good parent without having to read a book. That I should have this natural parenting gene that everyone has, except me apparantly.

If you don't like reading books on parenting then fine. But I wish people would leave us book-readers alone.

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pablopatito, I am not sure if your post was aimed at me and I apologise if I offended you.
My post had lots of smiley faces in because it was partly tongue in cheek although I do think there is some truth in what I wrote too. I have read some parenting advice books, some of it helpful, some of it not. I don't think parenting is something we just know. I do, however, think that as a generation we question our parenting in a way that previous generations don't appear to have done and that does leave a lot of us feeling insecure & inadequate.

No offence taken. Looking at the positive side of things, our generation have a much greater understanding of things like special needs, depression, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, cotdeath, secondary smoking etc etc. This can only be a good thing. Previous generations just labelled certain children as naughty and smacked them a lot. This is less likely to happen now, and part of that is due to books and research.

The fact that I grew up to be a happy, healthy, balanced individual despite my parents not reading any books or worrying too much about anything doesn't mean that many children of my generation didn't and ended up with problems that may have been avoidable.