Parenting the Millennial Generation
Guiding Our Children Born between 1982 and 2000
Verhaagen
2005
This one caught my attention in my sweep through the catalog. Since it is a parenting book, I wondered if there was something still relevant to today’s parents. I figure since the kids in question are in their 20s and 30s is it worth hanging on to in a public library collection? In everyday practice I wouldn’t necessarily weed a parenting book just for “age” unless it was woefully out of date. (Check out our Parent/Teacher category for real offenders)
I only skimmed this book, but the majority is standard parenting advice found in a variety of books. I am not quite sure it brings anything new to the table in 2022. In real life, I would weed if the circulation was still decent or if I need the space.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed this book except for the Alien Baby on the cover.
Thoughts?
Mary
Any indication who the cover art is by? Sure looks like the style of animator/illustrator Bill Plympton!
(Do a search if you’re unfamiliar….)
Maybe not putting a top-heavy laptop on alien baby’s high chair tray would be a good start. Unless the giant head counterbalances that.
This really is a weeder, considering the kids born in 1982 might be parents themselves now, and there’s no mention of FB, IG, TikTok and the like so even the “o noes online!” bits are obsolete. Today’s kids aren’t hanging out in AOL chat rooms.
The text samples are ho-hum compared to the hideous cover art.
I’d weed it. The parenting advice might be pretty solid, but it won’t reflect the last 15 years of child development research. Plus, the cover design looks…dated (and kinda fugly), the title is dated (which IMO would reduce interest), and the book’s information and attitude about the internet is incredibly dated.
Yeah, I’m an Xennial (assuming we exist), in that I’m in the black hole that often falls between Gen X and Millennial birthdate estimates (almost no one dates Gen X up to 1981, but apparently this book would). So that’s my first thought. Second is, we do, and always have, gotten so much garbage. We played video games and wouldn’t talk to our parents or do any school work as kids and teens, and now we’re still living with our parents and it’s somehow our fault that we can’t get real jobs and own houses (except for not being able to afford a house, none of this is true of me, for the record). So I’d weed it just because it is likely to offend a fair number of us who are the parents now. Unless you are so broke at your library that you can’t afford books that are about the birth of a generation that’s now the grownups, it’s not worth keeping.
The Xennials are hopefully getting parenting advice from up to date websites, not books older than they are. So I say weed it even if your library is broke.
If a book about raising children is likely to offend those children when they are adults – find a better one to add to the collection to begin with. Books like this that fail that test are probably less sound advice and more “_Our_ generation is fine, it’s _their_ fault they’re so hard to raise” crankage. (IMO)
Personally, I don’t think anyone born in the late ‘90s or 2000 should count as a millennial. If you were too young to have reliable memories of 9/11and social media existed before you were an adolescent, I think you’re the generation after.