Dr. Green's Baby Book

Australian pediatrician Green ( Toddler Taming ) begins by acknowledging, ``Not another baby book, I hear you groan.'' His book will indeed elicit groans, for a number of reasons. Efforts at humor are often silly and occasionally in bad taste (``When a new baby is born, some grandparents march into the home like Hitler marched into Poland.''). He characterizes fathers as helpless and uninvolved, and seems oblivious to the American experience (his repeated suggestions that grandparents pitch in neglect to consider that many grandparents live too far for casual visits). Green also has a penchant for delivering obvious or obscure advice, from urging new mothers to cut down on their ironing to discussing tactics to safeguard the baby who sleeps in a mosquito-infested room. More troubling is his guarded endorsement of sedatives for infants with chronic sleep problems. But the volume is not without its merits. Green is refreshingly candid in his recognition of the frustrations of parenthood, and offers lucid summations of the various physical and psychological stages of babyhood. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Aug.)