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Parenting manuals make parents feel inadequate, study says

If you’re a new mum (or mum-to-be), the chances are you’ve read at least one or two parenting guides in an effort to get the heads up on what to expect from your newborn. And with dozens of titles out there promising to teach you the best way to raise your child, you may even have read several – and been left feeling terribly confused about which one is ‘right’!

But according to British historian Dr Angela Davis, however well-intentioned these parenting manuals may be, in fact the only purpose they serve is to make new mothers feel inadequate by setting unattainably high standards.

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Dr Davis says that while the advice given varies from book to book, the way it is delivered is universal, with authors insisting their advice be followed to the letter.

‘Whatever the message, the advice was given in the form of an order and the authors highlighted extreme consequences if mothers did not follow the methods of child-rearing that they advocated,’ Dr Davis told the UK Daily Mail.

‘Levels of behaviour these childcare manuals set for mothers and babies are often unattainably high, meaning women could be left feeling like failures when these targets were not achieved.’

Dr Davis and her colleagues at the University of Warwick interviewed 160 women over a range of generations and backgrounds, asking how they felt about raising their children after reading some of the most well-known parenting guides, including those by Sir Frederic Truby King, Dr Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford.

They found that regardless of the parenting style each manual advocated, from hands-on attachment parenting to implementing a strict round-the-clock routine for your newborn, women overwhelmingly felt like failures as they believed they couldn’t live up to the mandatory ideals detailed in the books.

‘More than 50 years on and experts still cannot agree on the best way to approach motherhood. All this conflicting advice just leaves women feeling confused and disillusioned,’ said Dr Davis.

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