Parental Advice Literature

Parental advice literature is published material that seeks to guide parents in the task of raising their babies and children. It has usually been produced by those with claims to moral authority or scientific expertise in how children ought to be raised. As a particular publishing genre, parenting advice literature is said to have its origins in religious and medical books and pamphlets produced in America and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries but [Page 1181]has proliferated in the 20th and 21st centuries. It has been the focus of study for scholars in the field of childhood studies because, as a body of written evidence, it is thought to provide insights into changing conceptualisations of the child and the adult, mothers and fathers, parenthood ...