Before Caleb was born, Adam had a series of posts on Facebook that elicited impressive controversies. One was a question about circumcision and one was a question about vaccines. We were not particularly surprised by the strong reactions to either of these questions. What did surprise us was the strong controversy that emerged when Adam asked what one parenting book he should be reading. This, apparently, touched on all kinds of deeply held beliefs regarding “parenting philosophies.” I have to admit that before becoming pregnant with Caleb, I wasn’t even aware that there were such things as parenting philosophies. I naively believed that one just raised a child and took advice from wherever one could find it and used whatever seemed to work.

Not so.

As it turns out, there are different philosophies for parenting that run the gambit from attachment parenting to cry-it-out/babywise parenting to intentional lack of philosophy/trust your instincts parenting. And for each philosophy, there are specific books (or lack of books in the case of the last one). Moreover, there are large camps of parents who will swear up and down that a particular style of parenting worked like magic for them: the baby was sleeping through the night by 3 weeks, the baby never cried, the baby never left their side – the stories are as varied and as contradictory as the people telling them.

Adam, with his busy work life, takes comfort in the advice of friends who remarked that they had read nothing and their daughter was thriving in spite of them. I, on the other hand, take comfort in reading as much as humanly possible. Perhaps it is because I am the one home with Caleb all day almost every day, or perhaps it is a function of my personality, but I prefer to know as much as possible. For me, book knowledge serves as an important counterpoint to the sheer ignorance I feel in the face of this little person who does not use words (or reason it seems).

I can’t, however, get behind a particular parenting philosophy. Partly it is because there are so many and they are so contradictory (though equally compelling), and partly because I’m lazy when it comes to embracing something wholeheartedly (I could no more allow my baby to cry it out all night long than I could handle having him attached to my body all day and night). Rather, I view reading as an attempt to acquire as many tools, tricks, and ideas as possible because in my sleep-deprived, completely worn out by the demands of another person 24/7, state my own ideas, theories, tools and tricks seem shockingly out of reach. My parenting philosophy (if you can call it that) then relies primarily on my instincts, best guesses, random hunches, desperation to select the best tool, trick, or idea that I have read about or thought of. It’s a hodgepodge. And, in the end, if the well-being of child depends on the consistency of a particular parenting philosophy then I will need to make Adam pony up money for Caleb’s future therapy. Meanwhile, however, at least reading makes me feel like I’m doing something right. And, frankly, whatever gets me through the tough days (and nights) is all I care about at this point.