Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice

by James Lileks

Book Overview

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater! Ahhhh, the 1940s and '50s . . . a time when parents everywhere strove for the American Dream-manicured lawns, a shiny car in the driveway, and perfect... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400082285
• ISBN13: 9781400082285
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA)
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

You'll laugh until you cry

I am 45 years old and recently told my kids that in my day, infants didn't have car seats or booster seats (or even seat belts!) They asked in disbelief, where did you go in the car? I said, Nana and Pop just laid me on the floor of the car. This book proved to my kids that I was telling the truth about the dangers kids and babies lived through back then--and all the jaw-droppingly unbelievably bad advice mothers were given. My 12-year-old son loved the product that allowed parents in apartments to get fresh air and sunshine for an infant by hanging the baby out the window in some sort of box contraption. My 16-year-old daughter is reading it from cover to cover and getting a bigger kick out of it than I did. It was a nice day in Missouri here today, and I had the doors and windows open. I was laughing so hard while I read this book in one sitting (I could not wait to see what was next--oh, spanking children with hairbrushes for not having had a bowel movement that day, that'll teach 'em!) I was surprised the neighbors didn't call someone from the looney bin to pick me up. This book is a scream, literally!

Memoirs of an Enema

James Lileks makes me laugh like a hyena on nitrous oxide. Parts of this book were so true that they brought back vividly horrible memories, particularly of being chased down the block by my mother who, because i was bound up like a geisha's feet, had whipped out the old red rubber enema bag and the castille soap... Mr. Lilek's brilliant descriptions and explanations of back- in- the- day activities of daily living will make any reader cringe and wonder how children of that era survived into puberty, much less adulthood. For those readers who loved The Gallery of Regrettable Food, this book will not disappoint.

Laugh-out-loud funny, but be sure to boil it before you feed it to the kids

Need to set up a home birthing center, but all you've got on hand are a stack of newspapers and a packet of sterile vulva pads? Or maybe your baby's already arrived, but his ears are annoyingly prominent? Perhaps you're not sure how long you have to boil milk to tame its indigestible curds. Let James Lileks lead you through some of the sage parenting advice our forbears listened to in the olden days, back when "most of Mom's time was spent boiling bottles, dads were curious grumpy stubbled things that appeared in the house for no discernible reason, car seats resembled launching pads, and the children were spanked with hairbrushes for the sin of Constipation." In his beautifully illustrated Mommy Knows Worst Lileks reproduces scores of old ads and newspaper columns offering their often questionable advice about raising children. (Hint: whatever you do, DON'T PICK UP JUNIOR! You might land him in an insane asylum.) But better than the ads themselves is Lileks's snarky commentary on them, which will have you laughing aloud sometimes several times a page. ["The nursing mother should cleanse her nipples before and after each feeding with boric acid solution."] "There's nothing wrong with boric acid, except for the acid part; no matter how mild the stuff may be, this passage still seems to suggest that nursing mothers should plunge their teats into something one associates with the innards of automotive batteries." Not quite as amusing in the second half (on fatherhood, clothes and accessories) as the first, but the section early on in the book on health and hygiene (Tuesday is Diaper Boiling Day!) is alone worth the price of admission. Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

How'd we live so long??

It really is quite the miracle, judging from what James Lileks has culled from the pages of government pamphlets, advertisements, and articles of yesteryear. From leaving babies to sleep face down to warning parents not to engage in too much physical contact with their children, Mr. Lileks presents a steady display of the "advice" given our parents and grandparents. All with some of the most scathing and witty sidebar comments which leave the reader in stitches.

His best book to date

I may send this book to all my childen--several of whom now have kids of their own--just to give them a glimpse of the world into which I was born in the early 1950s. Fortunately, my own mother was (a) a registered nurse, (b) highly intelligent and (c) tough as nails, so she didn't pay attention to most of this rather scary advice. Also, I was the 5th of 6 kids, so she had already perfected her approach on them. (Of course, whether or not she was ready for _me_ is another question entirely; it is telling that even now when our family gets togther, they tend to tell "Bruce" stories from several decades ago.) Anyway, this is Lileks' best book to date--it came today and I read it cover-to-cover this evening, suffering several near-pulmonary-arrest fits of laughter in the process. My only complaint: it's far too short. I'm sure there is far more material out there for Lileks to skewer. Heck, I suspect even Dr. Spock's original (1946) _Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care_ would have produced a few gems. As Lileks says, it seems a wonder how we all survived--though I think the creeping nannyism of our current society has swung too far in the other direction. That said, I'm definitely giving away copies of this book for Christmas this year. ..bruce..