Parenting With Reason: Evidence-Based Approaches to Parenting Dilemmas

Sometimes it feels as though everybody has an opinion on how you should bring up your child – and no two people seem to agree on how it should be done for the best! Parenting with Reason cuts through the masses of confusing and often contradictory advice about parenting by providing hard evidence to back up the tough decisions all parents face. Unlike many self-help guides to parenting which are based on the opinion of one author, this book is based on many findings from scientific research, giving you a trustworthy, ‘evidence-based’ guide to help see your way through parenting dilemmas.

Written by a clinical psychologist, a developmental psychologist and a doctor of family medicine, the book looks at pressing questions such as: 'What should I do when my child acts up?', 'How can I get my baby to sleep through the night?' and 'How do I begin to toilet-train my child?' The authors, who are also parents themselves, debunk common myths about parenting, such as the notion that a healthy baby needs to be able to breastfeed at will throughout the night, or the idea that children who are adopted need specialized counselling. They also cover issues such as how children might be affected by seeing violence on television, how a parent’s psychological health can affect their child, what the scientific evidence is for and against circumcision, and how divorce and adoption affect a child’s development. The end of each chapter gives you 'The Bottom Line', a handy summary of the key points of each issue.

This book is ideal for new or prospective parents, and paediatricians, family health providers and anyone who works with children and their parents will also find the book’s objective, scientific approach useful in their work.

Esther Yoder Strahan taught for a decade as Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Heidelberg College, combined with part-time clinical practice. She has recently moved into full-time clinical practice. She enjoys travel with her husband Jeffrey and two young children, Laura and Isaac.

Wallace E. Dixon, Jr. is Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at East Tennessee State University. His wife Michele is a clinical child psychologist, and the two struggle to raise their daughters Rachel and Sarah to withstand the stigma of having two child psychologist parents.

J. Burton Banks is a former associative professor of family medicine at East Tennessee State University. His clinical interests include children's health and care of child abuse victims. Dr Banks now practises medicine in southwest Virginia, where he lives with his wife Korina and three children, Trent, Skylar and Tanner.