Lest new parents forget the age-old reasoning behind choosing baby names, circumcision and infant sleep training, journalist Apple (Schlepping Through the Alps
) gathers some helpful, not terribly groundbreaking but pleasantly humorous information for clueless, fully participatory first-time fathers. After dispensing in the first chapters with the hard-sell commodities market offered by “the baby industrial complex” (with his own wife several months pregnant, Apple admits to a kind of personal identity crisis when trying on the BabyBjorn at a mega–baby store), the author regards the various rituals of child birthing and raising in these snappy essays with a fresh, healthy skepticism. He wonders (without pursuing very deeply) whether the naming of a child brings happiness or grief. He takes a look at some of the labor-easing efforts that have emerged over the decades, such as water birth, Lamaze and hypnosis, and their histories and debatable rates of success. (Readers might be amazed to learn that the so-called Lamaze method originated in Soviet Russia as a way to avoid the use of pain medication.) As part of his unorthodox hands-on research, he tracks down his own mohel
(a Jewish circumciser, nicknamed the Yankee Clipper) and accompanies the founder of a nanny-surveillance outfit on a stakeout. Throughout these instructive essays, Apple maintains a calm, bemused tone. (June)
