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The Complete Mothers' Library

Looking for comfort? Advice? Or just proof that you're not the only one experiencing the internal chaos so intrinsic to child-rearing? Here, great titles that address an array of your most pressing parenting issues.

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Reversal of Fortune

Books that show us how to unspoil our children and ourselves

The Reading List

How to Unspoil Your Child Fast, by Richard Bromfield
Too Much of a Good Thing, by Dan Kindlon
The Little Disturbances of Man, by Grace Paley
The Millstone, by Margaret Drabble

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Child-Development Books

Parenting titles that don't focus on raising superbabies

The Reading List

Nurture the Nature, by Michael Gurian
The Wonder Years, by Tanya Remer Altmann, M.D., F.A.A.P.
Why Gender Matters, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.
Trauma Through a Child's Eyes, by Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline
Your Child's Growing Mind, by Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.

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The Other Woman

New voices mine the mother-nanny terrain

The Reading List

The Nanny Diaries, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
"How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," by Caitlin Flanagan
Searching for Mary Poppins, edited by Susan Davis and Gina Hyams
And Nanny Makes Three, by Jessika Auerbach
The Perfect Stranger, by Lucy Kaylin
Global Woman, Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild

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Cultivating Genius

Why are we literally buying into the cult of the wunderkind?

The Reading List

Buy, Buy Baby, by Susan Gregory Thomas
Hothouse Kids, by Alissa Quart
The Price of Privilege, by Madeline Levine
Unless, by Carol Shields

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Dad Lit

Reads by fathers that stand up in a deluge of mom-rants

The Reading List

The Bastard on the Couch, edited by Daniel Jones
Crawling, by Elisha Cooper
Alternadad, by Neal Pollack
Fatherhood, by Bill Cosby
Family Man, by Calvin Trillin
Believing It All, by Marc Parent
In a Father's Place, by Christopher Tilghman
Little Children, by Tom Perrotta
Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik

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Women's Fib

A new wave of writers debates the choices modern moms make

The Reading List

The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts
To Hell with All That, by Caitlin Flanagan
Perfect Madness, by Judith Warner
Get to Work, by Linda Hirshman
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
Getting a Life, by Helen Simpson

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Keeping Score

Literature that explores approaches to dividing parental labor

The Reading List

The Diary of an Honest Mum, by Jools Oliver
A Life's Work, by Rachel Cusk
To Hell with All That, by Caitlin Flanagan
The Bitch in the House, edited by Cathi Hanauer
Fruitful, by Anne Roiphe
Love Works like This, by Lauren Slater
Tell Me a Riddle, by Tillie Olson

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Naming the Sadness

The very gray, very real area between postpartum depression and a bad day

The Reading List

A Life's Work, by Rachel Cusk
Down Came the Rain, by Brooke Shields
The Ghost in the House, by Tracy Thompson
A Deeper Shade of Blue, by Ruta Nonacs
Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich
Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott

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The Things We Pass Along

Parenting with ADHD

The Reading List

Driven to Distraction, by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratney
ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life, by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau
ADD & Romance, by Jonathan Halverstadt
Women With Attention Deficit Disorder, by Sari Solden

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On My Nightstand

Books that help a mother of four confront her deepest parental fears

The Reading List

The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing
A Life's Work, by Rachel Cusk
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
"People Like That Are the Only People Here," from Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore
A Life's Work, by Rachel Cusk
Perfect Madness, by Judith Warner
Flux, by Peggy Orenstein
Is Your Mama a Llama?, by Deborah Guarino and Steven Kellogg