Possibly the funniest and most astonishing book you will read all year. For anyone who has had a child or been a child…

Richard Glover has been this country’s documenter of family life and the perils and triumphs of raising kids (and grandkids). So who better to cast a probing but humourous eye over the army of experts – magazine columnists, authors, nurses, priests and government agencies – who berated generations of Australian parents and shaped their children?

As Richard discovered, most of the experts were very certain about their own rules. Any deviation would produce a dire result: you’d ruin a child. Yet, over time, the advice kept changing. Each generation was told that the last generation had it all wrong.

If there’s once consolation, Richard suggests, it’s this: When relatives, and other critics, tell young parents that they are ‘doing it all wrong’, and that different (usually stricter) methods would make everything go smoothly, the experience of Australian parents over time is wonderfully reassuring. Parenting is tough, however you do it, and the outcome, however you get there, is usually a perfectly fine human.

This is a book full of original research, nostaligia, hilarity and horror. As Richard takes us through the decades of sometimes absurd, alarming, contradictory and often downright cruel advice, he puts it into perspective with humour, and kindly offers 20 positive tips of his own. Not ony that, he shows us how the best intentions from some truly remarkable people can get derailed into rigid doctrines that really do threaten to ruin a child, if not their parent.