Act Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting

Traig (Devil in the Details) explores parenting throughout the ages in this alternately hilarious and disturbing historical survey. A mother of two, Traig emphasizes how difficult parenting is in any era, observing that “to do even a half-assed job is a Sisyphean task.” Though the topics explored in different chapters—childbirth, feeding, sibling conflict, sleep, and children’s literature—are familiar, this is no ordinary childcare book. Traig finds a wealth of shocking “historical horrors”; in ancient Rome, for instance, parents often “exposed,” or abandoned, their unwanted offspring, and in later times sent them to “foundling homes,” which almost invariably proved fatal (infanticide and abandonment, Traig writes, functioned, in an era before safe and reliable birth control, as crude forms of “early family planning”). Alongside such ghoulish details, Traig finds amusingly offbeat ones, such as bizarre names bestowed by Puritan parents on their children for purposes of moral instruction (these include Kill Sin, Fly-Fornication, and Faint-Not). Throughout, Traig exhibits a sardonic wit, as when noting the historical curiosity that many early gynecological texts were written by monks, “who presumably knew less about female reproductive anatomy than anyone on the planet.” This information-rich history lesson is so entertaining it may keep parents up reading well past their bedtimes. (Jan.)