No Regrets Parenting

For every type of family, this updated and expanded edition is the quintessential, open-to-all parenting guidebook, guaranteed to help you find more—and better—time for your kids and yourself. It's not just how much time you have with your kids, but how you spend that time that matters in the life and legacy of a family. No Regrets Parenting focuses on the simple truth that the long days of busy parenting race quickly by and, looking back someday, the years with kids will feel far too short. Written by renowned pediatrician, celebrated author, and distinguished parenting expert, Dr. Harley Rotbart, No Regrets Parenting, Updated and Expanded Edition helps parents readjust their perspectives and priorities. Dr. Rotbart teaches parents how to experience the joy and depth of the parenting experience amidst the chaos and choreography of daily routines. Carpool, bedtime, bath time, soccer practice, homework, dinner hour, and sleepovers all become more than just obligations and hurdles to overcome. They become opportunities for intimate and meaningful time with kids— opportunities to turn fleeting minutes into memorable moments. Your kids need to see who you are and how you live your life. And, in return, they will help you to see who you really are and how you should be living your life. For all of that to happen, families need memorable and meaningful time together. No Regrets Parenting is about time—finding enough of it and making the most of it. Accompanying this timeless advice, Dr. Rotbart has added timely, updated content to address the ever-changing needs of today’s busy families. Also in this edition are two brand new sections: "Parenting Young Adult Children" (because parenting doesn’t end with high school graduation) and "No Regrets Grandparenting" for those magical years when your children become parents! Oh my! This updated and expanded edition answers the ageless question: How can you do it all…and stay sane in the process?

For every type of family, this revised and expanded edition is the quintessential, open-to-all parenting guidebook, guaranteed to help you find more time for your kids and for yourself. It's not how much time you have with your kids, but how you spend that time that matters. By pediatric doctor, celebrated author, and parenting genius Harley Rotbart, No Regrets Parenting, Updated and Expanded Edition offers the chance to shift perspectives and priorities. With the goal to help the modern parent juggle family responsibilities, professional lives, and personal lives, No Regrets Parenting is all about time--finding enough of it and making the most of it. Car pool, bath time, soccer practice, homework, dinner hour, and sleepovers all become more than just obligations and hurdles to overcome to get through the day. Accompanying his tried-and-true advice, Dr. Rotbart has included new content to address the ever-changing needs of families, taking unprecedented pandemics into account, along with the new challenges parents are facing. No Regrets Parenting, Updated and Expanded Edition answers the overwhelming questions: How can you do it all and, most importantly, how can you stay sane while doing it all?

Dr. Harley Rotbart's prescription for a life filled with gratitude for what we have and appreciation for what we have done with our time on earth. No Regrets Living is a proactive, 7-step plan to help us better appreciate what we have in our lives, and take greater pride in what we’ve done with our lives—without spending precious time and energy wishing things had turned out differently. Of course all of us have had disappointments, lamentable moments. For some, those times have led to lasting unhappiness and a life that feels unfulfilled, even meaningless. Others have found ways to move past the downturns and find better ahead. No Regrets Living leads us to see the world through a lens of appreciation for the magnificence around us, which in turn helps us accommodate those not-so-magnificent moments in our lives. Dr. Rotbart brings his unique perspective as physician, scientist, child of a Holocaust survivor, and heart patient to No Regrets Living. Part self-help manual, part inspirational road map, part moving memoir, No Regrets Living is a blueprint for reaching greater satisfaction and fulfillment in life. Woven into the timeless message of the book are especially timely observations on the COVID-19 pandemic from Dr. Rotbart's expert perspective as an infectious diseases physician, including coping mechanisms and paths for going forward as individuals and as a society.

Barry Kaufman's life has been spent helping others cope with severe adversities and traumas. When he learned of his father's cancer diagnosis, he had to summon all of his strength. That struggle, and the surprising rewards that came from it are the subject of No Regrets. Kaufman's father, Abe, was a man of simple tastes, modest aspirations, and respectable accomplishments who dares, at age eighty-five, to open his heart in the face of a terminal illness. His son was not ready for it at first, having limited emotional reserves after his own son was diagnosed as irreversibly autistic. This moving book about the unbreakable bond between a father and son shows how one man learned to confront and finally celebrate life's transitions.

Women who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true—that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds, sociologist Orna Donath treats regret as a feminist issue: as regret marks the road not taken, we need to consider whether alternative paths for women currently are blocked off. She asks that we pay attention to what is forbidden by rules governing motherhood, time, and emotion, including the cultural assumption that motherhood is a “natural” role for women—for the sake of all women, not just those who regret becoming mothers. If we are disturbed by the idea that a woman might regret becoming a mother, Donath says, our response should not be to silence and shame these women; rather, we need to ask honest and difficult questions about how society pushes women into motherhood and why those who reconsider it are still seen as a danger to the status quo. Groundbreaking, thoughtful, and provocative, this is an especially needed book in our current political climate, as women's reproductive rights continue to be at the forefront of national debates.

The shocking treatise that was a bestselling international media sensation upon its 2007 publication in France now makes its eagerly anticipated English-language debut. A mother of two herself, Maier makes her deadly serious, if at times laugh-out-loud-funny, argument with all the unbridled force of her famously wicked intellect. In forty to-the-point, impressively erudite chapters drawing on the realms of history, child psychology, politics, and the environment, Maier effortlessly skewers the idealized notion of parenthood as a natural and beautiful endeavour. Enough with this “baby-mania” that is plaguing modern society, says Maier, it’s nothing but brainwashing. Are you prepared to give up your free time, dinners with friends, spontaneous romantic getaways, and even the luxury of uninterrupted thought for the “vicious little dwarves” that will treat you like their servant, cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and end up resenting you? Speaking to the still “child-free”, to fellow suffering parents, and to adamant procreationists alike, No Kids is a controversial, thought-provoking, and undeniably entertaining read. Reasons to avoid having kids: •You will lose touch with your friends •Your sex life will be over •Children cost a fortune • Child-rearing is endless drudgery •Vacations will be nightmares •You’ll lose your identity and become just “mom” or “dad” •Your children will become mindless drones of capitalism •The planet’s already overcrowded •Your children will inevitably disappoint you

Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents? In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior tries to tackle this question, isolating and analyzing the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources—in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology—she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations—and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards. Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today—and tomorrow.