The Art of Conscious Parenting: The Natural Way to Give Birth, Bond with, and Raise Healthy Children

by Jeffrey L. Fine, Joseph Chilton Pearce (Foreword)

A new approach to creating, rediscovering, and renewing the intimate bonds between parents and children • Explains the importance of bonding with your child in utero and the physical and mental preparation needed even before conception • Shows how “green parenting”--breast-feeding, contact with nature, and low-tech creativity--can enhance your child’s life • The Art of Conscious Parenting won the 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for the best Parenting/Childcare book. The Nautilus Awards recognize books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living and positive social change, while at the same time stimulating the “imagination” and offer the reader “new possibilities” for a better life and a better world. Our first days and months of life are critical in forming the attitudes we bring into adulthood and in structuring the very roots of our personality. Simple bonding techniques--long forgotten in our modern world but stemming from the age-old customs of indigenous peoples--are at the core of a new model of conscious parenting that can produce happy and well-adjusted children. These practices also help parents experience an increased joy and intimacy both with their child and with each other. Based on obstetric and psychological evidence, Jeffrey and Dalit Fine reveal how bonding begins in utero and that the physical and mental preparation of both the father and mother, even before conception, sets the tone for the future well-being of the child. They show how sustained physical contact and simple ways of consciously interacting with your infant--eye contact with the newborn, baby-wearing instead of stroller use, and co-sleeping--have an observable positive effect. They also show that the “green parenting” practices of breast-feeding, contact with nature, and simple low-tech creative play not only provide a more hands-on and intimate approach to parenting but also are more economical and environmentally sustainable. From in-utero bonding through the challenges and joys of consciously interacting with your growing child, this book will help parents rediscover and apply the natural art of conscious parenting.

Genres: Parenting

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Megan Stewart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wildly inaccurate and self righteous. This reads like some kind of manic nut job manifesto rather than a book on natural parenting.

[Becs Hardt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Science of natural childbirth is fascinating but much of the rest was alarmist and incredibly privileged

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part, I liked this book and think it has a lot of useful information. That said, I found the author a little bit irritating and self-righteous. If you can get over that, which I did, the book does a good job of doing a literature review of work supporting pre-conception planning, natural childbirth, breastfeeding, etc. It does not do a good job of presenting a balanced literature review, which is fine, but should be noted if you're not 100% sure you want natural childbirth because the author is clearly telling you that you are a selfish parent who will cause irreparable harm to your child.

Another point of irritation is that the author goes to great lengths to tout the benefits of natural childbirth, breastfeeding, etc, but in a throwaway sentence extols circumcision as a positive religious bonding event without even acknowledging the ongoing debate about circumcision as potentially traumatic genital mutilation. I don't have particularly strong feelings about this, but it struck me as hypocritical to not even mention that performing "surgery" on a newborn may run counter to many of the themes in the book.

Summary: This is a good book for anyone considering natural childbirth, but you need to be able to put it in the context of one author's perspective who clearly thinks he and his wife are the most well/completely informed parents.