I have no doubt that this book will become a best seller as all parents are keen to raise a child that is balanced and happy in this difficult and challenging world. I found the book a profound disappointment, it was written in an extremely simplistic way, many of the points it made were obvious and mainly a re-hash of the Steve Biddulph books "How to raise happy children".
The advice is often conflicting and nonsensical. For example on page 87 we are told what toys to buy for young girls at 2 plus. Dolls, puppets, Accessories, however later in the book we are told that the reason western girls are underperforming in the sciences is because we indirectly encourage this by not developing their spatial awareness and teaching them to be helpless. The author then tells us that we should encourage play with numbers, blocks and more male based toys and those we should involve your child in typically male tasks. It takes as the norm that girls are not interested in playing with cars and trains (total nonsense in my very wide experience).
Coupled with some obvious type comments - girls like pets (particularly horses), (really!) and also music and sport (but don't over schedule them)!
What to do if your daughter gets pregnant "Then, the support of others to continue her schooling and settle in well with her new baby (and hopefully her partner) is essential to things working out. After all, a baby is a gift, even if the timing isn't right."
Err hello, well my daughter is only 2 but if she came home pregnant as a teenager I would want to go through all the options with her and support her choices. Including an abortion. If you indirectly pressure her to have it by telling her that a baby is a gift then she may (only slightly) resent you when her life ambitions, career and marriage prospects are ruined by a baby that you will end up raising.
And of course the fear mongering. Does your daughter feel totally misunderstood "Try family therapy - before your daughter gets into a life-threatening crisis". There are common causes of depression, stress failure at school........any of these can lead to depression, sometimes even to suicide. Gisela and Steve are,of course, family therapists.
Oh and fathers you can be one of three types; bad (authoritarian) Useless (soft) and Good (true) - and that's all! No issues looked at in any depth at all.
Working mothers, she quotes Steve Biddulph who she tells us is "the well known Australian therapist". We know this his name is on the front of the book and she has repeated most of his ideas. "Why did you have this child if you are just going to have her looked after by strangers? Are we living in a cuckoo society where you place your young in someone else's nest?" Steve doesn't believe in children being cared for outside the home until they are 5 ( has he ever tried to keep a 5 year old stimulated home alone for 12 hours a day) unless of course you feel that you are so bad at parenting that you can not raise the child yourself. I was astonished to read in the epilogue that the author had put her child in a nursery (in Steve's view the worse type of day care) from the age of one - so it is certainly not the case of practising what you preach!
On the whole unless you know absolutely nothing about children and gender and don't have copies of Steve's books do not waste your money there is nothing of worth in its pages.
