Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford [Paperback]

A hugely entertaining as well as edifying read and packed with fascinating facts. A classics. (Guardian )

A fascinating study. (Time Out )

The perfect panacea for any pro to-parent faced with a barrage of contradictory advice on how to bring up their child. A hugely entertaining as well as edifying read and packed with fascinating facts. A classic. (Guardian )

Ought to be compulsory reading for new mothers. (The Week )

Parents have long been bombarded with conflicting advice on how to bring up their babies: from Locke, Rousseau, and Truby King to Spock, Penelope Leach and Gina Ford. Behaviourist warnings in the 1920s about physical contact ('Never hug and kiss them. Never let them sit in your lap') swung to Jean Liedloff's 'continuum concept' that babies should be wrapped round mum and fed on demand. Today enthusiasts for the 'family bed' are at war with Gina Ford's call for a return to the strict routines of pre-Spock days. Who is right and who is wrong?

In this updated edition of her classic account of how and why the experts' advice has changed with changing times, Christina Hardyment analyses the anxieties of our own age and gives parents much-needed confidence in their own ability to choose the advice that best suits them and their babies.

Christina Hardyment has written books and articles on dizzying range of subjects (including her collection of historical sewing machines, domestic technology, family life and a biography of Sir Thomas Malory). She lives in a rambling house in Oxford with a huge garden, where she is already planning camps and a treehouse for her grandchildren. Time off is spent sailing on the river, in a British Moth dinghy.

To visit Christina Hardyment's website click here