Parenting With Grace: Book Review

I received this wonderful book for free for review purposes from The Catholic Company, a small business specializing in selling books and gifts that can help Catholic families grow in their faith. The Catholic Company was recently recognized as one of the top 10 mobile commerce sites of 2010 by InternetRetailer.com finding themselves amongst the elite ranks of companies like Apple. Walgreens, Amazon & Barnes & Noble for their user-friendly, innovative website created in-house.


What it is: Parenting With Grace, 2nd ed. is a parenting book offering theoretical discussion of how attachment parenting meshes with the Catholic faith and practical suggestions for dealing with everyday parenting situations.

Who wrote it: Greg and Lisa Popcak are a husband-wife team of Catholic radio personalities with psychology backgrounds and 3 kids.

Overall Impressions:
I thought this book was extremely insightful, especially the section explaining why they feel practices like breastfeeding and co-sleeping mesh so well with the Catholic views of natural law and self-giving love. After reading this, I felt like I understood much better the reasons why those same practices felt so right for our family.
I also thought a lot of their "real-life" examples were pretty funny and found many suggestions that seem like good things to implement with my own family as my son gets older. I really liked the emphasis on positive discipline as opposed to punishment for misbehavior.

Pros:

• Thorough discussion of attachment parenting, Catholic theology, & natural law


• Well organized for easy reading/reference


• Lots of "real-life" examples and practical solutions

Cons:Unapologetic in promoting only the parenting style they personally find best which may turn some readers with different parenting styles off

The bottom line I highly recommend this book to any Catholic parent or parent-to-be. Other Christian parents would probably like their tips, but should skip the first section on parenting types as it seems fairly anti-Protestant at times. I'm not going to try to be a mini-Lisa Popcak and copy everything they suggest, but there were definitely some great tips in there that I'll try to apply to my own famiy, and I LOVE the section discussing attachment parenting, the Bible, and the Catholic view of natural law.

Get it: Parenting With Grace is available from The Catholic Company for $14.95 as I post this review.

I was not compensated for this post other than by receiving a free copy of the book for review purposes, and this review is my honest & original opinion. Besides books like this one, the Catholic Company is also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.