The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids [Kindle Edition]

I agree with another reviewer here; The Idle Parent is infuriating. It has the potential to be a good read but there are far too many inconsistencies in Hodgkinson's theory. Plus, he has an awkward humour and style of writing, and his name dropping is tedious.

I agree with Hodgkinson's general principle that we should avoid over-parenting and that mindless consumerism is bad for us, however, he struggles to fill a book on this topic. As well, it seems as if he hasn't quite thought through his manifesto; he chooses which rules suit him, whenever it suits him.

Example: in one chapter where he talks at length about how 'childcare' has become outsourced, he warns against the hiring of nannies and talks about how the hiring of theirs was a terrible thing and how they became dependent on her. Yet, in another chapter he recommends hiring a nanny to make life easier, how theirs was the most wonderful thing and that she enabled them to get some sleep. There are many similar inconsistencies throughout the book.

Also infuriating are his many generalisations and silly assertions that range from the naive (all schools should aim to be more like Eton) to the absurd (the reason the examination results of his former school, Westminster - which he raves about - were better than everyone else's is due to their term time being 2 weeks shorter. Apparently, it had nothing at all to do with Westminster attracting the cream of the crop).

The chapter on No More Family Days Out is his strongest, genuinely amusing and insightful and giving us food for thought. I wish the rest of the book had been as effective as this one. The weakest chapter is Down With Schools, which comes across as smug and elitist and irrelevant. The book would have been better off without it.

I wanted to like this book as it showed promise. I did love the faithfully researched historical references and found those fascinating and you can't fault his enthusiasm. But the last straw was his list - an indulgent 12 pages long - of recommended children's authors: Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, Blake...you get the idea. It's not that I don't also recommend these authors, but he goes on to rubbish all modern children's literature and says to ban them from the house - this, after telling us not to ban anything. Apart from the fact his, frankly, cliched list adds nothing to the book or the manifesto, surely the idea of a parent imposing on his children his idea of what makes for good reading goes against the very principles of Idle Parenting; of leaving children to be who they want to be, and, I presume, read what they want to read, be it Alex Rider or Peter Pan?

Finally, he ends the book by claiming, "It is far better to be poor in money but rich in time," but you've got to wonder a) just how poor this guy has ever been and b) how many of those actually living in poverty would agree with him. I can just see all those unemployed, struggling to survive, saying to themselves, ah! but I have time!

I have not encountered such an infuriating book for a long time. I am broadly speaking a continuum concept, idle parent sort of person, but this book had me chucking it a couple of times. I know how I parent and am happy with it, so I was in no way reading it as a guide, which is just as well as this book is not aimed at people like me.

The main issue I have with this book is that its demographic is clearly ONLY the middle class professional who has plenty of money, a garden and lots of choices about how and where they live. I first chucked this book when people living on the 10th floor should get allotment space so the children can be left to potter. I live on the fourth floor - I assume that this also applies to me - but where am I going to find an allotment?! I live a mile from the City of London! And even if I could find one I wouldn't be able to afford the few quid it costs.

I chucked this book a second time when the author starts going on (at some length) about private education. Did you know that you could easily save £10,000 a year if you just cut out things that you really don't need? No? Neither did I. If I wanted to free up that kind of money - double it in fact as I have 2 kids - we would all starve and have no home - £10,000 being 90% of my annual income. In this section he also completely contradicts his idle parent hypotheses by giving as an example of a woman who really wanted to send her child to Summerhill and raised the money by working a market stall! NOT very idle!

A frankly laughable aspect of his analysis of the wisdom of private education was inferring that Eton is the epitome of autonomus education and therefore fulfils all the criteria for the free thinking anarchist or autonomous parent! Methinks Old Etonians enjoy positions where they boss us little people around - THEY may be autonomous (though I suspect that they are slaves to the mighty dosh as much if not more than the rest of us), but they are certainly not striving for a freer and more autonomous society.

He also refers to Jeremy Bentham as 'evil'! Of course he is entitled to his opinion, and Utilitarianism is by no means a perfect philosophy, but it is certainly in no way evil, and nor was Bentham. The Continuum Concept (which he extols) has a good heart, but is good for making people (lets face it women) feel bad about not being able to be with their babies ALL the time. We are not all so privileged as to be able to have nannies and cleaners to make things a little easier!

I have not given this book a lower rating for not liking it - that is not the way I critique - I have marked it down due to the many inconsistencies in his hypothesis and the examples he uses to support it. It is an interesting read, but does not hold together convincingly as a result of this.

This is a superb book which has helped me to re-think the way I parent. My children were over-stimulated and overscheduled due to overkeen parenting and my 5 year old watched way too much television as a toddler (he was a poor sleeper and very lively so I thought TV would help me and him in some way but it made matters much worse as I believe excessive TV contributed to his hyperactivity and being unable to entertain himself). My eldest has always been extremely demanding however, having read The Idle Parent, this is set to change! I've already started to make changes to the way I do things and now my ironing gets done during the day (not 10 o'clock at night anymore!) whilst my children play in the garden with the patio door firmly closed!!