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Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice | 
 enlarge | Author: James Lileks
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy New: $8.09
You Save: $9.91 (55%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  38 reviews
Sales Rank: 59868
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 176
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 7.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 1400082285
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5402
EAN: 9781400082285
ASIN: 1400082285
Publication Date: October 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
From the author of The Gallery of Regrettable Food comes a horrifying-yet-hysterical book dedicated to the expert parenting advice from previous generations. Each glossy page includes vintage print ads and photos accompanied by James Lilek's mean comments. But then, what other response is possible, when faced with cough syrup advertisement with a happy child exclaiming, "A cough syrup good enough to eat with ice cream"! General categories include "Clothing and Accessories" (including a pattern to make a headband that binds protruding ears to babies' heads), "Bowels" (featuring an ad with the text, "If he spanks me again, I'm going to run away from home"), and "The Good Old Days", which offers several detailed options for creating a home delivery center. In every chapter, Lilek's comments are the equivalent of cracks from your most sarcastic friend. For any new parent who's tired of modern advice books, or expecting parents in need of a touch of humor amidst the stress of pregnancy, look no further. Every page has a laugh, and every page will remind the reader that sooner or later, almost all parenting advice will end up having the same worth as what's included here. Jill Lightner
Product Description
Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater!
Ahhhh, the 1940s and ’50s . . . a time when parents everywhere strove for the American Dream—manicured lawns, a shiny car in the driveway, and perfect children playing in the yard. Raising kids was simpler back then, or was it?
In Mommy Knows Worst, you’ll be treated to a visual feast of past parenting neuroses—as well as insight into why concerned moms and dads were driven to buy “delicious” baby laxatives, douse their baby in oil and put him in the sun, and strap Junior into a car seat that bore a strange resemblance to scrap metal. If you’re a baby boomer who lived through this childhood torture, well, we’re sorry. But if humor really is the best medicine (rather than bicarbonate of curd and mustard plaster, as was previously recommended for childhood ailments), then Mommy Knows Worst is cheaper than therapy.
Photographs, advertisements, magazine articles, and government-issue parenting guides, which seemed so helpful in their day, are given a whole new slant by the master of the genre, James Lileks. Mommy Knows Worst is a rollicking tribute to old-fashioned parenting that gives us a whole new reason not to forget our past—it’s hilarious!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 33 more reviews...
 Another winner! August 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Another winner for James Lileks, whose work is hilarious, bordering on hysterical. Even after having read this and other works of Mr. Lileks before, when I read them again, I cannot stop laughing. Do check out his website, too. It's just as funny.
Mommy Knows Worst July 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the funniest books I have read. I grew up during this period and agree with the author that "it's a miracle Dick and Jane survived." You will laugh until you cry. It is a fun book that can be passed on to your own children.
Somehow we all survived our childhood April 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
James Lileks is one of this era's masters of comedic commentary. Unlike old whats his face (Dave Berry, Erma Bombeck, et. al.) who writes comedy, Lileks excels at quips, naming conventions, and often times finding cultural jewels that beg for recogition after years on the great trash heap of disposable ephemeria. He is a wit of great talent.
Mommy Knows Worst is collection of child raising items and nostrums that mothers have believed, practiced, purchased for us, their children since the turn of the 20th Century. If any of us tried us some of things on our children (like the bare metal car seat that leasurely drapes over the passenger seat) we'd have children's services at our door step!
Lileks point is, especially if you are a babyboomer, however horrid some of these examples are, our parents used them on us and well we're here, aren't we?
Lileks other talent is planting a quip where you least expect it, and realize, he's right. In one illustration from an accepted mothering text, a mother from 1930s is giving her infant an enema. The mother holds the babys legs up in the air and is delivering the enema with tiny bottle, while this baby is peacefully looking at something off camera. Lileks starts his commentary by simply stating of all the times for baby to be easily distracted, this isn't one of them. He's right - if it were any of us we'd be screaming our heads off!
ANd thats what I like about James Lileks - he can go from the sublime to the outragous in the turn of the page and it works.
This book is a hoot and I like it much better then Interior Desecrations.
How did children survive the 1950's :0) December 22, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I absolutely loved this book. Not many books make me laugh out loud, but this one kept me in stitches. I even passed it around work to all the mothers I work with, and they all said the same thing "how the hell did we survive". Definitely a new fan of Mr. Lileks. This book would make a great gift for any new mom :0)
Hilarious December 8, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I loved this book. I will personally be buying it for any friend or family member who is expecting. It would make a great gift for any parent who has read "What to Expect" type books.
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