Once upon a time, expectant moms and dads would get a copy of Dr. Spock, which they would then place carefully on the nursery shelf, ready for consultation when little Johnny got an earache or baby Jane was slow to walk. Those days now seem like the stuff of fairy tales, since niche titles are dominating the marketplace. (Which is not to say that the classic has been replaced:Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care has more than 50 million copies in print since its 1946 publication, which is second only to the Bible.)

"Parents are looking for something different, and they are also much more informed about their choices than parents of previous generations were," says Sterling publisher Charles Nurnberg. These parents seem to be taking their choices more seriously, as well, given the recent spate of news stories about disciplining children (or the lack thereof)—for example, the new California referendum against spanking, or the Massachusetts family that was taken off an AirTran Airways flight last month when their four-year-old daughter's tantrum disturbed the passengers. (Evidently this brood could benefit from Elizabeth Pantley's The No-Cry Discipline Solution, coming in April from McGraw-Hill.)

As part of the transition to more niche-oriented books, Nurnberg cites Sterling's Great Expectationsseries. He views the first title, 2004's Great Expectations: Your All-in-One Resource to Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sandy Jones and Marcie Jones, as a counterpoint to Workman's hugely successful What to Expect When You're Expecting titles. "We felt ours were a bit more hands-on," Nurnberg explains, "for parents who were becoming much more inquisitive and more willing to look at different points of view. It's a lot harder to be the 'one voice' of authority, especially with young parents who have adopted a nonauthoritarian style." (Great Expectations: Baby's First Yearis due in July.)

Publishers are adapting to the shift—from big parenting tomes to more focused titles—for a couple of reasons, says Marnie Cochran, executive editor at Da Capo/Lifelong Books. "First, once you establish a 'voice' in the parenting and child care arena, it's very hard to dethrone that voice—even when it might be high time to do so." Da Capo does publish an established voice, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton; how has the Touchpointsauthor managed to stay relevant? "He doesn't preach so much as explain," Cochran says. "Brazelton's theory, which he outlines in his first two books, is all about trusting your own instincts. That plays very well with the modern parent's outlook."

Many of today's parenting books are aimed at the time-strapped parent who hasn't the luxury to ponder broad overviews of child care as in days of old—not when the culture is changing so fast. "Parents are more concerned about details than ever before," says Gotham Books senior editor Erin Moore. "They're looking for books that fit very specific situations." Moore cites as an example an April Gotham title, Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy over Youth Sportsby Regan McMahon. "It's about a very specific problem—an incredibly healthy trend that has gotten out of control."

Palgrave Macmillan editor Amanda Johnson Moon notes a dramatic increase in the popularity of parenting books dealing with such topics as technology, alternative forms of education, religion and adolescence. "Parents are looking for books that will guide them through obstacles that may not have seemed significant even 10 years ago," she says. Certainly, Palgrave's just-published I Want It Now: Navigating Childhood in a Materialistic World by Donna Bee-Gates speaks to that interest. The materialistic world is also the focus of a May title from Houghton Mifflin—Buy, Buy, Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds by Susan Gregory Thomas helps parents navigate an over-commercialized world of products for the younger set.

Da Capo's Cochran characterizes recent trends more bluntly: "The consumer perspective has completely changed. New parents aren't just more willing to question authority; they're willing to find new sources of authorities."One of those new voices of authority is Jennifer Block, a former editor at Ms. magazine and an editor of the revised bestseller Our Bodies, Ourselves. Her book Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care will be published by Da Capo in May.

"Moms crave information they can trust," says Chronicle senior editor Lisa Campbell, who notes that many couples are having children later. "Parents who have waited a long time are willing to spend a great deal of money on baby equipment and accessories." Those accessories, of course, include books. A dad willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a Bugaboo or a Strolly will think nothing of spending $15.95 on a paperback parenting title—with a proviso.

"If it's hip," says Campbell. "Children's products are seen as extension of lifestyle. There are more status items for babies than ever before, and books that merge baby's life with parental lifestyle choices are at the forefront." Campbell's example of that kind of book is Organic Baby by Kimberly Rider; she believes titles like The Three-Martini Playdate have been overpublished, and that the current crop of moms and dads craves information over entertainment.

Some entertainment, however, is a good thing, according to newly appointed Hudson Street Press editor-in-chief Luke Dempsey. "After all, we are in the business of entertaining people to some extent, because if they can get information in an entertaining way somewhere else, they're going to get it." Dempsey, the father of twin daughters, says he gets tired of parenting titles that present everything as a problem, which is why he enjoys the anti—Chicken Little stance of his list's The Mother-Daughter Project:How Mothers and Daughters Can Band Together, Beat the Odds, and Thrive Through Adolescence. Based on the experiences of therapy professionals SuEllen Hamkins and Renee Schultz and their daughters, this April title tells how those families negotiated adolescence with strength and equanimity. Dempsey adds, "I think parents today would rather learn about issues while also being told about a life or a point of view that's quite different from their own."

Cochran at Da Capo concurs. "The days of navel-gazing, saccharine parenting manuals and memoirs are completely over," she says. "We're seeing more poignant, honest stories about parenting, partly due to the rise in memoirs. It's kind of, 'I'm so flawed, hear me roar!' " (See sidebar, p. 55)

Differing Opinions

Da Capo's Cochran believes that the pendulum will swing back toward the "one expert fits all" mindset, that the Dr. Spock—knows-all mindset will return. Others, like Nurnberg, think that niche parenting is here to stay. They might both be right, in a sense, if Rabbi Shmuley Boteach continues to gain fans. Boteach is the host of a TV series on The Learning Channel. His message is not that all parenting wisdom can be in one book, far from it. But he does believe that a good parenting book is about more than parenting—it's about the whole life, of child, of family and of community. Call it a holistic approach to raising children. His Shalom in the Home: Smart Advice for a Peaceful Life is coming next month from Meredith Books.

A radical element of Boteach's approach is the notion that being a couple trumps being parents. This topic—keeping sexual relations relevant after becoming a parent—is, judging from the number of forthcoming titles, catching on. Last month's Babyproofing Your Marriage: How to Laugh More, Argue Less, and Communicate Better as Your Family Grows by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O'Neill and Julia Stone is billed by publisher Collins as "the warts-and-all truth about how having children can affect your relationship." And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives by John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman is described by Crown publisher Steve Ross as "not just descriptive, it's also prescriptive. John Gottman is the Dr. Kinsey of relationships—he's the first to take relationships into the lab—specifically, his nationally known Love Lab." Stories straight from the source are presented in Blindsided by a Diaper: Over 30 Men and Women Reveal How Parenthood Changes a Relationship, an August Three Rivers Press title edited by Dana Bedford Hilmer.

Sterling's Nurnberg emphasizes that things aren't easy for parents, no matter what their relationship status is. "The other day I was reading the New York Times, and I got to page 37 before seeing a positive article. Children today are watching a war live on TV."

Teens are indeed confronted with a confouding, stimulating, thrilling and dangerous world. Giving them advice is at the top of most parents' to-do list, to say the least. The roster of forthcoming titles on teen-specific issues includes Helping Your Troubled Teen: Learn to Recognize, Understand, and Address the Destructive Behavior of Today's Teens by Cynthia Kaplan, Blaise A. Aguirre, M.D., and Michael Rater, M.D. (Fair Winds Press, July); The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Robert Epstein (Quill Driver Books, Mar.); and two titles from AMACOM: When to Worry: How to Tell if Your Teen Needs Help—and What to Do About It by Lisa Boesky (July) and The Identity Trap: Saving Our Teens from Themselves by Joseph Nowinski (Apr.).

According to AMACOM executive editor Ellen Kadin, "These books are so important and so perennial because teens have issues that are completely specific to their age, and much more complex than the kinds of problems parents are used to solving with reward-and-punishment based solutions."

Given all of the issues concerning today's parents, says Nurnberg, it's no wonder they're looking for something different: "If they need it, they're going to find it, so it's up to us to figure out what that 'something different' is in terms of books." Listen up, publishers.

Parenting for Net Results
Q: What are kids doing on the Internet, and how much time are they spending there?

A: A lot, and a lot. With today's youngsters being weaned on MySpace, IMing their pals and making friends on a growing array of Web sites, it's no surprise that several new books are offering parental guidance to this electronic world. As Marlowe & Co. editor Katie McHugh puts it, "Parents have always needed to be aware of what's going on in their children's lives—where they're hanging out and who they're hanging out with. Today, that means knowing what kids are doing on the Internet, because that's where they are spending two or three hours a night with friends and with virtual strangers. And part of what kids love about the Internet is that it's easy to avoid parental detection."

Coming next month from Marlowe & Co. is a book whose title reflects one of today's most popular hot spots: Generation MySpace: Helping Your Kids Survive Online Adolescence by Candice M. Kelsey, an author with what the publisher calls "front-lines perspective"—she's a teacher who specializes in teen counseling. Another title that capitalizes on the popular Web site's recognition is Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World (Baker Books, July) by the husband-and-wife team of Chap and Dee Clark.

Providing another voice of reason amid parental confusion is Anastasia Goodstein, whose blog, Ypulse, provides commentary about Generation Y for media and marketing. In Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online (St. Martin's/Griffin, Apr.), Goodstein claims that kids today are doing exactly what kids have always done, just in a different way—that they are defined by the highly digitalized world in which they were raised. And out this month, from Zondervan, is MySpace for Moms and Dads: A Guide to Understanding the Risks and the Rewards by Connie Neal.

Sharon Miller Cindrich teaches "tech-challenged" moms and dads about assorted technologies in E-Parenting: Keeping Up with Your Tech-Savvy Kids, a June title from Random House Reference. Terms like podcast and IM, says the publisher, represent a lingo in which youngsters are already fluent. According to RH editor Helena Santini, "Kids today are influenced by technology in a way that parents were not when they were growing up. As a parent, if you're not in the loop on these new technologies that are so prevalent in your child's life, how will you be able to relate to them and protect them from the unknown?"

Protection is key in a March title from Integrity Publishers—Internet Protect Your Kids: Keep Your Children Safe from the Dark Side of Technology, which offers tips for safe social networking and covers such topics as why the Internet is kids' first choice for recreation and communication. According to authors Stephen Arterburn and Roger Marsh, the appeal of MySpace and other social networking sites "is the fact that they give every account holder a place to belong." Along similar lines is a March title from Dutton, To Catch a Predator: Protecting Your Kids from Online Enemies Already in Your Home by Chris Hansen. Executive editor Trena Keating sums up the inherent dangers in this sub-category: "This new Internet world exists outside the time-tested rules of parenting." —Dick Donahue

Renegade Moms
Mothers—they've stopped living up to an ideal and started living it up instead. From June Cleaver to Carol Brady and on to Marge Simpson, media images of motherhood have mirrored expectations of American moms—and so have parenting books. Experts insist that Mom be in peak condition before conception, during pregnancy and throughout Junior's childhood.

Is it any wonder that moms are now rebelling against expectations they may not have had a hand in setting?

Signs of incipient maternal mutiny surfaced with 2002's The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage (Morrow), which was followed in 2004 by Muffy Mead-Ferro's Confessions of a Slacker Mom (Da Capo Lifelong), a slightly more humorous but no less serious take. Coming this month from Da Capo is Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock 'n' Roll, in which Evelyn McDonnell tells of her quest for identity after motherhood: "Having a baby changes everything. Except you."

In three forthcoming titles, moms' frustration with rigid rules moves from narrative to the realm of actionable advice. I Was A Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reinventing Modern Motherhood by Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile (Chronicle, May) contains real-life wisdom from other mothers, along with a "Dirty Little Secrets" chapter.

What the Other Mothers Know: A Practical Guide to Child Rearing Told in a Really Nice, Funny Way That Won't Make You Feel Like a Complete Idiot the Way All Those Other Parenting Books Do by Michele Gendelman, Ilene Graff and Donna Rosenstein (Harper Paperbacks, May) provides easy-to-follow lists that make the first-time or clueless mom feel slightly less crazed.

In Even June Cleaver Would Forget the Juice Box: Cut Yourself Some Slack (and Still Raise Great Kids) in the Age of Extreme Parenting (HCI, May), Ann Dunnewold goes beyond acknowledgement of today's trend toward "mommy madness" and helps women realize that "perfectly good" is attainable, while "perfect" is not. According to HCI editor Allison Janse, "It's fine to say don't get caught up in the madness, but when you're frustrated at the playground, you need a bit more." —B.K.P.
Special Needs Parenting
According to Perigee editor-in-chief Marian Lizzi, "The diagnosis rate for conditions like autism and ADD has gone way up, and people are turning to books for help. Not just parents—but others who work with special-needs kids. We published The Out-of-Synch Child in 1998, and have seen an exponential increase in its sales every year since 2001."

Out this month from Perigee is Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) by Lucy Jane Miller. "We see this as a companion title to The Out-of-Synch Child," says Lizzi. "These syndromes are kind of unfolding mysteries and often go hand in hand. That's why books and communities on- and offline are so important to the people involved."

Newmarket's On Their Own: Creating an Independent Future for Your Adult Child with Learning Disabilities and ADHD—A Family Guide by Anne Ford and John-Richard Thompson (May) should handily find an audience, given the 2.9 million students in the U.S. who receive special education services for learning disabilities. Coming in June from Square One is Creative Therapy for Children with Autism, AD/HD, and Asperger's by Janet Tubbs.

Another title in the syndrome-specific realm is Talking Back to OCD: The Program That Helps Kids and Teens Say "No Way"—and Parents Say "Way to Go" by John S. March, M.D., with Christine M. Benton (Guilford Press, Jan.), which organizes treatment guidelines into an eight-step program. One of the tenets of March's program is for parents to offer praise without imposing expectations, which is also the thesis behind David Elkind's The Power of Play (being published this month by Da Capo in conjunction with a 25th-anniversary edition of Elkind's The Hurried Child).

Sometimes understanding how parenting is affected goes deeper; one of the forthcoming titles to address that is The Turnaround Mom: How an Abuse Survivor Stopped the Toxic Cycle for Her Children—and How You Can, Too by Carey Sipp (HCI, May). Married with Special-Needs Children: A Couples' Guide to Keeping Connected (Woodbine House, Jan.) and The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About the Extraordinary Highs and Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs by Denise Brodey (Hudson Street Press, May) both offer the kind of support crucial to families and couples dealing with the stresses and strains of their children's challenges. —B.K.P.