'Parents have lost the plot': Controversial author updates book for new generation

For the past 40 years, maternity nurse Rachel Waddilove has been guiding women through the dense fog of new motherhood. Her methods, spelt out in her parenting manual The Baby Book, first published a decade ago, are controversially traditional - she advocates swaddling, controlled crying and formula - yet her client list includes Hollywood A-listers such as Minnie Driver and Gwyneth Paltrow.

'Parents have lost the plot': Controversial author updates book for new generation 1461978047345

'Parents have lost the plot': Controversial author updates book for new generation 1461978047345

Now Rachel, 68 and a grandmother of six, has decided to bring The Baby Book to a new generation. She has spent the past year compiling a new edition of the book, out this week, and which takes into account mothers' evolving lifestyles.

"It's not me who has changed," she says, "it's modern mothers. You're all so busy, you travel so much and you scare yourselves by reading nonsense on the internet. I want to make my message even clearer."

As a first-time mother three years ago, I was one of Rachel's "girls". She showed me how to swaddle Hector, my firstborn, and leave him to settle in his cot. The results were instantaneous: my husband and I began to get a lot more sleep.

Two babies later, however, and I've gone soft. My latest addition, Horatio, 12 weeks, is exclusively breastfed, he spends his days attached to me in a sling and has a special cot connected to our bed, which he usually shuns in favour of sleeping next to me.

As I tell Rachel this, she sighs. "Modern parenting is all about the child, and that's what I don't like about it," she says. "I'm not belittling the fact that children are precious - they're a gift - but we're building a generation of little tin gods and it's not creating a very nice society. We've lost the plot."

http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/baby/life-with-a-baby/parents-have-lost-the-plot-controversial-author-updates-book-for-new-generation-20160430-goiteh

'Parents have lost the plot': Controversial author updates book for new generation

'Parents have lost the plot': Controversial author updates book for new generation

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