Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father [Hardcover]

Susan Newman Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Whether you’re a CEO or schoolteacher, single or married with children, you are still your parents’ child. Regardless of your age, you can be transported back into adolescent angst by what you perceive to be a parent’s demands, criticism, or other manipulations.

Are you tired of conversations or visits ending in arguments or hurt feelings—yours or theirs? Do you feel guilty about things you did and didn’t do or say? Do you say “I’ll never be like my parents,” only to realize that you act more like them than you’d ever imagined? Nobody’s Baby Now is a practical guide to resolving those and other dilemmas by reinventing your relationship with your parents. Susan Newman, a social psychologist who specializes in family dynamics, offers realistic strategies for improving the adult child-parent relationship, based on two years of interviews with 150 adults between the ages of twenty-eight and fifty-five, who share their experiences—from pet peeves and holiday conflicts to money issues and long-standing grudges. Their stories are universally familiar and provide insights into your own family dynamics, while their strategies for changing patterns of behavior on both sides are inspiring.

Covering issues as varied as boundaries and babies, in-laws and careers, Nobody’s Baby Now gives you the tools to keep disagreements to a minimum, turn intolerable situations around, and guide the transformation of your adult child-parent relationship into a mature, supportive, and loving connection.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...Newman's wise and practical approaches promise less guilt-ridden, more compatible relationships with even the most difficult parents." -- Susan Ginsberg, Ed.D., Editor & Publisher,

"...Professionals and adult children will want to keep this volume handy..." -- Bonnie Markham, Ph.D., Psy.D, Adjunct Faculty, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School-UMDNJ

"A superb survival guide for all adults seeking a better understanding of—and a more rewarding relationship with—their parents." -- Joshua Piven, author of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook

"Clear, clever and sensible...guides you over the inevitable potholes..." -- Myron Gessner, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

About the Author

Social psychologist Susan Newman, Ph.D. teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day, Parenting an Only Child, and Never Say Yes to a Stranger. She is a member of the American Psychological Association.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714072
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714077
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #307,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As a social psychologist, for decades I have focused on relationship and family issues from enriching parent-child and family connections to reaching a sensible balance between work and family, from preventing child abduction and alcohol abuse to getting along better with your parents when you are all adults, and more. The material for my articles and books comes from extensive interviewing and evaluation often combined with the studies and findings of other psychologists, psychiatrists, and related experts. My goal is to provide readers the most accurate, objective, and useful insights available on the topic.

I believe conflicts and disturbing problems can be eased, if not solved, and most relationships improved when people are willing to make the effort. My books are created and designed to give you the information and tools to help you succeed in making a better, happier life for yourself, your children, your parents, partner, friends, and work colleagues.

Those considering or raising an only child will find interesting discussions at my Psychology Today magazine blog: Singletons

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down with the Queen of Difficult, October 31, 2003

By 

Aleida Lamb "Triplet's mom" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father (Hardcover)

Down with the Queen of Difficult

The words, difficult, stubborn, nosy, busy-body, controlling, demanding were invented for my mother.

She was always in my face about what I wore, the latest guy, when am I going to settle down, telling me not to see this friend or that. She had to know every detail of my life. She made me utterly miserable, then I read "Nobody's Baby Now.' Voila! I can handle her now. Newman offers ideas on how to change YOUR thinking about a needy parent and she shows you how
to make a parent feel loved while you pull back from her. I learned at age 32 I'm an adult, and I can make some of the rules about our relationship and do it nicely. What a blessing this book has been for me.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Is A Book For Adults, June 16, 2003

By 

Richard J. Levinson (Amherst, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father (Hardcover)

If you think you have a dysfunctional relationship with your parents and that they are the root cause for your unhappiness then this book is not for you. If, instead, you are an adult who takes responsibility for their own happiness and you are looking to improve the quality of your relationship with your parents this is a helpful tool towards that goal. Moving past the parent-child bond and into a richer more fullfilling relationship, dare I say friendship, can be difficult but if you're willing to be a grown up about it this book can assist you in tackling some of the issues you may be avoiding.

The authors personal anecdotes and related stories from her study subjects are helpful illustrations to which many of us can relate. It shows that even in the best of families we all have issues when it comes to dealing with our parents on an adult level. The chapters are concise and to the point without being cold and clinical.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple, solid and marriage saving, December 11, 2003

By 

Sue "Founder, Sisters in Script" (Cedar Grove NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nobody's Baby Now: Reinventing Your Adult Relationship with Your Mother and Father (Hardcover)

As a professional in the field, what I like about Nobody's Baby Now is that the author gets to the point quickly and in clear, concise language. The author makes complicated problems and issues with parents easy to sort out and resolve. Her real life examples make you think she's talking about you and your parents. She has solutions for adult children who resort to child-like behavior when with parents, who allow parents to continue to run their adult lives or parents who put a wedge in their adult children's marriages. She's got a solid handle on in-laws and tells readers how to get their own; and she totally understands overly involved, judgemental grandparents. Her main points are highlighted in boxed areas for quick reference which tell you how to get a "grip" on the issues you may have with a parent.

This is a book that can save marriages from parents' destructive behaviors and put adult children in charge of their own lives by making them independent of Mommy and Daddy without severing this powerful and all important connection. It is must reading for all adult children - be their problems with their parents big or small.