A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.
Harlow’s second self-help guide, following Happily Divorced (2019), is for readers striving to co-parent well after separation.
This book offers a variety of suggestions for how to navigate the most difficult decisions regarding co-parenting. She wants parents to thrive in collaborative relationships rather than fight at every step—or just try to “get through” until the children are grown. She’s optimistic that, in most cases, improvement in co-parenting is possible. Harlow covers a wide range of relevant topics, starting with “uncoupling”: how couples might tell their kids about a decision to separate and how to address questions of custody, living arrangements, and potential reconciliations. She then introduces decisions that need to be made when first establishing a co-parenting plan, including elements that one might not consider immediately, such as arrangements involving pets, vacations, extracurricular activities. The author also tackles questions regarding money, new partners, and stepparenting. Harlow is consistent in her approach, often bringing her suggestions back to the golden Rule. She wants co-parents to be empathetic, intentional, and good communicators, even coining a new term that encompasses these states: matter-of-fact caring. The clearly organized structure of this book successfully presents the author’s advice in a logical order while also laying out personal experiences—such as finding a new home after a divorce, attending parent-teacher conferences, dealing with unexpected events, and more—as she tried to build a collaborative co-parenting framework with her ex-husband; at one point, her son writes one section about his parents’ relationship. However, what’s missing in this book is expert advice and cited evidence to back up Harlow’s advice and claims, particularly in sections such as discipline, in which insights from a child or family psychologist might have strengthened the author’s opinions. A few more anecdotes from other families would also have provided a more varied perspective.
A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Promethean Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Frank, insightful writing about neonatal medicine and being a parent.
A neonatal intensive care physician describes the demands of her practice and the difficulties of achieving work-life balance in this debut memoir.
For 35 years, Landers took care of premature babies and sick newborns in her medical practice. She tells of growing up in South Carolina and moving to Texas, where she completed her medical training, married, and raised three children. The central focus of this memoir, however, is her daily challenge of providing critical patient care, in which she was regularly required to make life-or-death decisions, while also dealing with the requirements of motherhood. Along the way, Landers details some of her standout cases, altering the names of patients and their parents to protect their identities; she discusses the consequences of maternal heroin addiction, a birth of quintuplets, and her treatment of newborn with a depressed skull fracture. One of her toughest cases, she says, involved “a tiny African American baby born at 27 weeks’ gestation, weighing 480 grams (less than one pound).” After becoming a mother, Landers found that, despite her expertise as a neonatologist, she still had much to learn about living with babies. She candidly describes the ways that she felt that her working life came in conflict with her role as a mother; for example, she writes about the difficulty of breastfeeding and working full time, as well as the dangers of burnout. Landers also considers broader issues, including her views that women approach the medical profession differently than men do.
Landers’ approach to writing is concise and forthright. When describing caring for newly admitted babies on radiant warming beds, for instance, she notes, “This work environment tended to dry out your eyes or burn the top of your head….During long procedures, my contact lenses felt like potato chips, and I found myself drenched in sweat.” It’s a no-nonsense style that effectively highlights the physical and emotional strains of working in a NICU. That said, Landers tends to rely on medical jargon, and although she often provides explanations for lay readers, some passages may be obscure to the uninitiated: “Emily had an isolated intestinal perforation—not necrotizing enterocolitis, a severe bowel inflammatory condition.” The power of this memoir, however, lies in its honesty, as Landers is never afraid to address her own shortcomings. A horrifying incident when she lost patience and slapped her son’s legs repeatedly prompts a revealing discussion of the author’s childhood, in which her father was a “harsh disciplinarian,” and her own determination to avoid providing physical punishment as a parent. At the close of the memoir, the author offers a list of what she considers to be the key characteristics for a career in critical care: “Grit, overachieving, and self-discipline are powerful predictors of a successful practice.” Such observations will prove useful for both new and aspiring physicians, but the memoir as a whole will prove to be illuminating for anyone striving to be a caring and effective parent while pursuing a high-stress career.
Frank, insightful writing about neonatal medicine and being a parent.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63-195450-4
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Astute, poetic reflections on the powerful mother-daughter relationship from conception through the baby's first year. Developmental researchers have found that when a mother and her infant gaze into each other's eyes, the feelings generated can be so intense that one or the other must turn away for relief. It is about such feelings that novelist Erdrich (The Beet Queen, 1993, etc.) writes in this intimate record of pregnancy and giving birth. "Love of an infant," she says, "is of a different order" than love of an adult: It is "all-absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages...uncomfortably close to self-erasure." But like mother and infant, neither writer nor reader can confront those emotions directly for very long. So Erdrich finds both relief and metaphoric power in painting scenes from her life with her husband, five other children, a dog, and many cats on a New Hampshire farm. She describes dreaming over garden catalogs in the long New Hampshire winter nights, trapping and taming feral cats, collecting birds' nests, an "all-licorice" meal her husband prepared to satisfy her inexplicable craving, and a blue jay's defiant dance to successfully thwart a hawk's attack. Tied to each tale of rural life is a range of emotions: rage, depression, frustration, pain, sorrow, and nostalgia as well as transcendent joy, ordinary pleasure, pride, and satisfaction. How "a writer's sympathies, like forced blooms, enlarge in the hothouse of an infant's needs" is also part of Erdrich's story, as she trudges back and forth each day to her writing shack, accompanied by her nursing infant. For instance, a writer's effort to understand and depict evil becomes easier when the threat of evil coincides with a mother's absolute need to protect her child. Occasionally too self-conscious about the importance of Erdrich's role as Writer, but the bond between mother and infant has rarely been captured so well.
Pub Date: April 18, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017132-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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