Using the latest research and a wealth of personal experiences, this is the fact-based, no-nonsense approach to birth, child health, and shared child-rearing you have been waiting for.
Many expectant parents will be surprised and relieved to hear the following: breastfeeding doesn’t protect against allergies; sterilising bottles and dummies is unnecessary in most countries; and if you think you shouldn’t drink alcohol when breastfeeding, you’ve been taken in by plain moralism and not scientific evidence. And by the way, you can forget the housework and prescribed routines: as long as you attend to your baby’s basic needs and maintain your social and work connections, you’ll be doing just fine.
Paediatrician Dr Cecilia Chrapkowska runs one of Sweden’s most popular parenting blogs, Barnakuten, and is a specialist on vaccinations. Dr Agnes Wold has been named Sweden’s Woman of the Year for her tireless work in women’s health. Together they present cutting-edge research from around the world that can guide you to make better parenting choices. Drawing on Sweden’s famously generous parental leave and enlightened social policies, they also demonstrate the importance of equal parenting, and provide practical tools for parents everywhere to share responsibility equally.
Parenthood the Swedish Way is an egalitarian, myth-busting guide through the maze of challenges that parents face raising healthy, happy families in the twenty-first century.
‘Agnes Wold has been a guiding hand when I’ve been pregnant and had small children. A more comforting hand than various parenting bibles, a more allowing hand than the leaflets from the maternity care and the child health centres. She gives the parent more room to be a human being, and less bad conscience … What parents need is advice based on science and level-headed tips. And some encouragement.’
Sydsvenskan
‘These are things (the sterilising especially) I could have done with knowing all those times I was staring, eye a-twitch, while willing a kettle to boil at 3am as an infant mewled in my ear.’
Anna Whitehouse, Grazia
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‘Doctors Chrapkowska and Wold do much to dispel the common misconceptions around child-rearing by providing a commonsense, scientific approach. Even if you’re not involved in the parenting business, there’s much to be gleaned from a Swedish take on this crucial undertaking.’
Dan Shaw, Happy Mag
