Pregnant women and new mums/carers MUST read this book (How Not to Be a Perfect Mother - Libby Purves)

Member Name: Medusa

Product:	How Not to Be a Perfect Mother - Libby Purves
Date:	11/09/00 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You'll laugh and feel a little less alone in your experiences

Disadvantages: Dated and an opinion from someone with a higher income than average

What a superb insight to motherhood. It's so refreshing to read about "real" parenting from a humourous, objective, yet honest viewpoint. Libby Purves is a well known broadcaster on Radio 4 and a guest on various tv programmes, yet I'd never heard of her. This didn't matter to me... she is a "mother" with experience and that's all that matters.

She has captured the moments in raising children that we all experience and looked back at them with a wonderful sense of humour. I think any Mum, Dad or Carer would agree that certain events are awful at the time, but hilarious when looking back after a year or two.

Libby used a bank of approximately 50 mothers (friends) to gain extra information and material and this works well. No-one can just use their own experience to write a book such as this.

The book is positive and will have you laughing so hard, your partner will sign any document commiting you to an asylum within minutes but also has, in my view, two main drawbacks.

Firstly, there is talk of Nannies and Libby obviously has (given her career) more money than the average, so certain elements of the book are not too useful for simple old housewives such as myself. Secondly, the book was first published in 1986 and is therefore dated when covering items such as car seats and welcoming pubs.

Ultimately, any book which makes a new mum laugh is the best book on the market. I'd recommend this book to anyone, please beg, borrow from the library or buy it.

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