In one of the most crucial areas of human life—raising children, parents face many problems of varying degrees and far too many failures. The parents themselves may be excellent persons with the best of intentions and love for their children but they may not necessarily be the parents they want to be. This could be because they do not understand children or how to motivate them to good behavior. When parents face these perplexing problems, many feel without adequate guidance. The purpose of this book is to teach parents how to find success with their children. It explains the kind of people parents could be, the home life they must provide, the care and devotion required and the close friendship they must build to reach this success. It teaches clear-cut methods of helping them to be obedient and responsible, of developing their character and intellect to its highest potential and of building a feeling of self-worth.
Helen Berry Andelin was the founder of the Fascinating Womanhood Movement, beginning with the women's marriage classes she taught in the early 1960s. Controversial among feminists for its advice toward women's fulfilling traditional marriage roles, her writings are still supported and re-discovered as recently as 2016, with classes still being taught online and in seminars.
If you followed every bit of parenting advice in this book, you would be the PERFECT PARENT. This book covers it all, and by all, I mean ALL. There is instruction on what you must be and provide as a parent, to minute descriptions of how to raise a child physically, socially, emotionally, etc. It spans birth to married children.
I did take off one star for the dry nature of the book. Unlike Fascinating Womanhood by Mrs. Andelin, which I gobbled every word of and couldn't wait to hear what divine instruction she would teach on the next page, this read more like a dry textbook. Very good information.... but easily put down, and at times, boring.
It is easy to gloss over the old-fashioned parts. This book WAS written in the 60s, so the urging to hold your child securely in your lap instead of putting your baby on the floor of your car you can proooooobably just ignore :) Most of the information remains incredibly pertinent to our time, and I will refer to this as a parenting handbook when I have a specific need or question. I would recommend it to anyone looking for parenting with good, old-fashioned sense.