THE COMPLETE BOOK OF ABSOLUTELY PERFECT BABY AND CHILD CARE

Dedicated here to the perpetual preservation of parents (her previous book permanently removed housekeeping) Mrs. Smith offers a complete course on one-up-manship against the immature, views child raising with both eyes closed and marks herself as no one to get in a diaper rash about babies, to genuflect to Gesell, to submit to Spock or to be of an ilk with Ilg....Her prime rules are sufficient insulation for even the most timorous parental performer; instead of a panacea she adjusts a panache; when it is a question of survival -- it is the child who must go. The art of unrefined baby upbringing, the battle with the pediatrician and other mothers, the art of lying, how not to lose caste during the feeding, walking and teething areas of anxiety -- these are in preparation for the cautionary plateaus of cleanliness and neatness, health and hygiene, family fun and parties, sibling rivalry, heredity and environment, plummeting parental IQs, money (children are uneconomical), pets, responsibilities and school. This mad seminar is interlarded with the ease and joys of raising hamsters. Depends on the tenor of your feelings towards spoofs -- but it is pretty funny in its best spots.