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The Madness of Modern Families
 
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The Madness of Modern Families (Hardcover)

by Annie Ashworth (Author), Meg Sanders (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Price: £12.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (5 Oct 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340923415
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340923412
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.7 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 234,560 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

Round the bend and over the edge - how far will you go to be a perfect parent? Does an impending child's birthday party fill you with performance anxiety? Did you spend more time on your child's homework last night than on your own employer's end-of-year report? Do you drop boastful hints about your child, saying 'George is so "busy"' - even though George is six? If so, you might be suffering from the madness of modern families. This book is a hilarious insight into the modern rat race that modern middle-class family life seems to demand. It asks, why have we acquired the skills of a black cab driver as we ferry our children from Monkey Music bassoon lessons to advanced trapeze? And why do four different children now require four different kids of pasta - leaving aside the pressure of children's birthday parties and the need to provide organic veggie Halal birthday cakes? Funny, irreverent and right-on-the-button, THE MADNESS OF MODERN FAMILIES taps into a phenomenon that we've all recognised but haven't dared to speak out about . Until now ...>


About the Author

Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders are they authors of the bestselling Goodbye, Jimmy Choo. They have written several non-fiction books together, including the bestselling Trade Secrets and Trade Secrets, Parenting. With five children between them, they are highly-qualified to tip-toe through the minefield that is twenty-first century parenting.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A Wasted Opportunity, 11 Feb 2007
By Corky the Cat (Bicester, UK) - See all my reviews
If you are already a stressed parent and want to read lots of anecdotes from other stressed parents (bemoaning peer pressure from other parents to spend money they don't have in order to create a "perfect" child", then you will probably enjoy this book enormously. The authors have successfully (and often very amusingly) documented the sort of bizarre competitive behaviour modern parents are driven to. However, the book is very short on analysis ie: what changes have happened in society in the last 20-odd years that have made us so acquisitive and materialistic and why don't we parent ("Is that a verb?" to quote one mother interviewed in the book) in the same way as our own parents did?

If you actually want a bit more social context to the problem and practical strategies in child-rearing, I recommend "Toxic Childhood" by Sue Palmer.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Performance Parenting, 20 Jan 2008
By Victoria M. Willemse - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Madness of Modern Parenting (Paperback)
Written in a journalistic style, this book's thesis is that "modern" parents act more and more weirdly in their parenting styles (than perhaps parents in former years did).

The parents concerned appear to be people living on above average earnings, who have allowed themselves to be so swayed by others' opinions that they cannot bring up their own children in confidence: allowing themselves to be swayed by pester power (approval by children) and allowing themselves to be cowed by the opinions of other parents (lots of keep-up-with-the Joneses going on here).

There seems to be the universal message that "oh, if only they would spend some *time* with their children, rather than foisting on the poor children all these after-school clubs and societies, activities and extra classes" and an implicit message that no matter how hard a parent tries, they can never match up - either to the expectations of their peers, or, sadly to the expectations of their own parents.

Whilst there is much to find entertaining, and so much that can be (hopefully) attributed to hyperbole, the book reads too much like an extended opinion piece from a magazine: as a result, it's a book that will probably sit on my bookshelf and remain un(re)read for quite some time.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh out loud, 20 May 2007
By Mrs. M. Sachdev (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read on the topic of parenting. I recognised myself in some of the scenarios in the book and it also gave great insight into what teachers think of mad modern parents.

If you enjoyed the series on BBC, then this book is definately worth a read.
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