This book details Kim Brooks and how she navigates the aftermath of leaving her son in the car and how she begins to understand fear-based parenting. As a parent, I loved this book. I can see how I parent out of fear but also am unsure how to change that. I can also resonate with parents who try to parent away from fear and yet get criticized, shamed or even arrested. There is no way to balance this in this country. It makes me jealous of other countries where their children actually feel free.
I loved this book and I would absolutely recommend it to parents who are interested in more free-range parenting but also those who are less structured, more outdoor.

I loved this book and it made me rethink all of my parenting decisions and anxiety. Highly recommend!

Brooks is a journalist and also a parent; she is nearly sent to prison for having permitted her son to remain in the car watching a video while she bopped in to a big box store to purchase headphones. The experience provided a catalyst for discussions and research she has done on structured parenting practices versus a looser model, for which she advocates. The resulting book is a plea for greater flexibility and more options for parents that either question the wisdom of tight societal controls on parenting, or that cannot find or afford the childcare that their children are legally required to have when the parent or parents must go to work.

I read this intense manifesto free of charge in exchange for this honest review. Big thanks go to Flatiron Books and Net Galley for the review copy.

Brooks has an engaging writing style, and at the outset of the book I was with her entirely. I wouldn’t leave my child in the car as she did, but the legal fallout sure seems like overkill. Whatever happened to a warning first? But later in the text I find some outrageous logical fallacies and suppositions that she uses to bolster her argument in favor of free range parenting. I quickly moved from being supportive, to questioning, to feelings of hot indignation, and several times I felt it best to set the book aside while my temper cooled.

I suspect I have a lot of company out there. I’m a grandmother now; my children are raised, and though I love my grandsons, I am also happy not to be the one that is raising them. So I have the benefit of a bit of space and distance when I look at this controversy. Fresher are my feelings as a teacher, because there are plenty of hot buttons here that connect with educators, and I haven’t been retired from the classroom for long. More on those hot buttons in a minute.

My favorite part of this book is the research behind and inside of it, and she includes some material that is new to me. For example, I wasn’t aware that nearly three-quarters of Americans in their twenties are childless, or that childcare is so hard to find at any price that more mothers—including low income women—are stay-home mothers. There are a lot of great quotes. However, the conclusion Brooks draws from that research leaves me scratching my head.

The head-scratching as well as the hot buttons all have to do with the suggestion that children, including those in early elementary school, be permitted to roam by themselves to whatever family-oriented public locations their busy parents approve of. An example is the public playground. She reasons that if a mom that works fast food for a few hours after school lets out says her kid is allowed to leave school and go to the park, then the kid should be able to go to the park; likewise, if a writer such as herself wants some alone time, she should be able to drop her kid at the park and go home to her keyboard.

This assertion is bolstered by an assertion that very few children are harmed by strangers, and she proves this thoroughly for those that didn’t already know. In addition, she points out that there are already a lot of parents and other adults at the park.

This is the point at which my jaw drops open and I start closing doors and drawers a little extra hard just thinking about what she’s said. Brooks blithely overlooks the common ways that children at the playground get hurt. Let me count the ways: kids run in front of moving swings. Kids climb the slide someone else is sliding down and maybe both kids are injured. Kids chase a ball into moving traffic. Kids have an allergic reaction when previously nobody knew they were allergic to a single thing. Sometimes kids quarrel with other kids, and whereas many parents deal with this appropriately, there are inappropriate parents out there. If your child upsets Poopsie and Poopsie’s mama decides to unload on your kid, who’s going to step in? If an older child invites yours to play doctor in the bushes and wants to show your child something he’s seen mom and her boyfriend doing, who is going to stop them? Never mind the dangerously strange adults; most of us know there are few of them. But what about everyone else, and what about the accidents that a kid can have anywhere, and for which quick action can make a big difference?

Now let’s look at it from another angle. Which stay-home mom at the park wants to be responsible for your child? What if the park is emptying out and she wants to take her children and go get dinner started, but there’s this one solitary, anxious child that will be left behind? What can she do if one of the above-mentioned accidents befalls your child and he or she is unconscious? She calls an ambulance, and then what? Without parental approval, medics cannot even treat your child. An epipen? An IV line? A trip to the hospital? Some states and municipalities may allow a professional to start treatment, but even if they can, most hospitals won’t admit a kid whose insurance details are not known. And then of course there’s liability. If that parent—the one doing his or her job—gives your child a band-aid or a cookie and it turns out to be the wrong thing, what then? No good deed goes unpunished. And right about now, every reader that has ever worked in a public school is vigorously nodding their head.

Then too, many stay-home parents have made a choice to live on less money in order to create a better life for their family. The closest distance between two points is the stay-home mother and whoever has no childcare and wonders if she could take care of their kid because (fill in the blank.)

Usually a book such as this one will make a strong case for more federally funded childcare, and if that was Brooks’ s main focus, I would be posting a review of this book to every possible outlet in an effort to create a more vocal bandwagon. But instead Brooks really just seems to want other people to watch her kid free, and leave her occasional bad choices unmentioned. (She suggests that the person that called the cops when she left her kid in the car should have spoken to her in person; can you even imagine the hell that might befall anyone that openly questions a total stranger’s parenting practices?)

So if you are looking for a conversation starter for your book group, this might be a good choice, because it is loaded with controversial ideas. If you want to see where those kids come from—the ones that wander in unsupervised and seem more needy than the kids that have a relative, day care supervisor, or nanny in attendance—here is your epiphany. But if you are a prospective parent looking for advice, I suggest you run in the other direction. Run fast.

This is one of those books that I think everybody should read - and not just parents. The author had the police called on her when she left her 4 year old son in her vehicle for 5 minutes while she ran in to Target to get him earphones on her way to the airport, and it threw her into a years-long drama that involved having to turn herself in for arrest and plead guilty to a crime. The ordeal led to her connecting with many other mothers who had been charged with crimes, generally for really ridiculous reasons and sometimes with heartbreaking results (especially for poor mothers and women of color).

Brooks does an excellent job at looking at the current climate in our country of judging, shaming and punishing mothers for things like letting their children go to the park, wait in a car, or ride the subway unattended. Along the way she shows how these things are far less dangerous than our fear could possibly justify, and that this policing of mothers is really a reflection of our society's treatment of women in general. She also writes a lot about our current climate of fear-based parenting and the way it's pushing mothers to try to be absolutely perfect and create an unrealistic and unhappy new normal for kids and mothers alike.

I read this book on my iPad and found myself highlighting so many passages that there were entire sections that were rainbow colored. Brooks talked to so many different women and referenced so many thought provoking books that it makes for a really engrossing read. I ended up reading passages to my 20 year-old and it led to a fabulous discussion of everything from orphan trains (remember, most of those children were not orphans but kids from poor families that other people deemed were not parenting them properly) to the way the way this policing of mothers typically targets poor mothers and people of color.

While I enjoyed the book, I do not relate much to the author as a mother and there were quite a few times when she rubbed me the wrong way. She really seems to dislike being a mother in a lot of ways, and has a lot of resentment about what it means to be an American mother today. She writes about parenting methods like attachment parenting as if they're oppressive and unrealistic parenting methods that doom mothers to depression and a lack of a life. She talks about things like the fact that American mothers never have time to read a book because our lives are spent on nothing but our children. I am/was an attachment parenting, cosleeping, breastfeeding, homeschooling mother to five children and I consider my life full and my interests fulfilled. I've read over 80 books this year according to Goodreads (and published my fourth book this year). I don't think my children are keeping me from having a life. They have merely made it fuller (okay, and messier and louder).

That said, this was a fantastic read. I have a feeling that other types of mothers probably need to hear this message more than I do, but I would argue that everybody does. Well worth the read.

I read a digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

In March 2011, Kim Brooks left her four-year-old son in the car unattended while she ran into Target to buy him headphones for a flight they were taking about two hours later. The day was mild, the area was suburban and safe, and Brooks could see her car from the checkout lane. When she returned to her vehicle, her son barely registered her existence, as he was totally immersed in his tablet. The most stressful part of the day at that point was how she was going to manage to feed, dress and herd her two young children onto a plane alone.

Luckily for Brooks, the flight went by without any major struggles. However, this perhaps would be her last moment of peace for several years. Unbeknownst to her, a “Good Samaritan” had noticed her son alone in the car and filmed him before reporting her parenting to local police. By the time she landed at home in Chicago, she was greeted by her pale-faced, stricken husband, who said only, “Call your mother.”

Before Brooks knew it, she was on the phone with the police and a lawyer, forced not only to defend her parenting techniques but also to confront herself. Was she really a good mom who made one bad decision? Or was she a monster, the kind of mom who let her kids gallivant among molesters, kidnappers and murderers? The truth is, it’s hard to say. The Good Samaritan who made that first phone call clearly knew on which side of the argument he or she landed, but what about the rest of us? What about Brooks herself?

In SMALL ANIMALS, Brooks seeks not to defend herself or walk readers through the grueling years of court dates, panic and punishment that followed that sunny March day. Instead, she explores the “why” of it all. Why did that Good Samaritan feel he or she was doing the right thing? What had changed from the “good old days,” when children as young as eight or nine could walk down to the convenience store to buy milk for the baby, or cigarettes for their perfectly polished 1950s parents? Why have our notions of what it means to be a “good parent” changed so drastically over the years? Have we become more informed, or only more fearful? To answer these questions and more, Brooks explores both the legal and cultural forces shaping American parenting, fearlessly and brilliantly illuminating the influences of the media, socioeconomic class and the watchful gaze of other parents.

One of the first points Brooks explores in SMALL ANIMALS is the difference between what her parents would have defined as good parenting and what we define it as today. She explains that one huge, life-changing difference between then and now is the choice to have children. Whereas having children was just something her parents (and my parents, and your parents) just did, to have a child now is seen as “a thing you in particular have chosen, a special duty and responsibility that only some accept.” As a result, the stakes become much higher, and tragically our tolerance for different parenting styles becomes much more complicated.

In our current time, this means that parents are judged first for having children, but then, once the child is born, they are judged for a multitude of other, sometimes uncontrollable things: Is the child fed/clothed/healthy? Okay, now is the child socially active/intelligent/a good citizen? The problem, Brooks argues, is when we conflate these qualities so that a parent with a child who, for example, does not participate in clubs at school is judged as harshly as a parent who has not fed his or her child for a week. Thus parenting in the age of fear. Being a parent --- especially a mother --- is without a doubt one of the most difficult jobs in the world, and Brooks argues that adding an unnecessary level of surveillance is not only irrational but harmful.

Brooks goes on to explore several different waves of parenting and their political influences, always tying the events back not only to her story, but to the current climate of parenting. She speaks to psychologists, doctors, lawyers and everyone in between, including her own friends --- some of whom hold wildly different ideas about parenting than herself. Her research is thorough and highly illuminating, but definitely at its strongest when she is clearly impassioned. Reading SMALL ANIMALS feels like enjoying a particularly stimulating conversation with a friend over coffee. Brooks does not whine, cajole or beg; she simply asks the questions.

Refreshingly, Brooks is not afraid to confront her own privilege. When she learned that there was a warrant out for her arrest, nearly two years after she left her son in the car, she was able to get her lawyer on the phone, fly back to Virginia, pay a fine, and complete some relatively low-impact community service to have the moment practically erased. But what if she had been a woman of color? What if she could not afford the plane ticket back, or the fine? Brooks does speak to women of different races and classes, but does not claim to be able to tell their stories, and through them the idea of parenting in the age of fear is amplified tenfold.

In the end, the matter of “free-range” parenting --- or even making a single bad decision --- will always be a gray area. Brooks cannot change the minds of those who believe her to be a monster, nor can she encourage truly bad parents to change for the better. What she can do, and has done beautifully in SMALL ANIMALS, is ask her readers to give mothers the right to be rational, and change the language from one of criminalizing and shaming to one of supporting and cooperating.

This book is so relatable. As a mother I have often noticed that my worst parenting moments come when I'm making decisions based on what other parents will think. Her research on how we turn on each other as parents was so interesting and true to my experience. We can't control the actually scary things so we create scary things we think we can control .

ARC Copy via NetGalley

Small Animals is an important book that discusses the author's own nightmare of how parenting in this era has gotten off track. Today's parents are shamed as well as put into competition with one another to be "perfect" parents at all levels. Being a child of the 50's and 60's, I was raised in a freedom that would likely have my parents jailed today. Kim Brooks writes of this great divide between helicopter parenting and free range parenting of today.

The author made a decision one day to leave her young child, refusing to leave with his mom, in the car when she ran into a store for one item, while a person watched this and reported it to police. The author returned and left the area before the police even arrived, child intact.. This developed into a two year long case of child neglect, which the author lived.

Well researched and written, Small Animals discussed how we have become a country obsessed with too many judgements of parents who aren't perfect, who happen to be primarily women. The author really never makes a judgement of what she thinks may be "correct", but discusses how we got there.

As an early intervention specialist, I have strong opinions on screen time, letting kids get dirty, play, and child development. Most of the judgements that are raised on parents are in complete opposite to what is good for kids, all in the name of "safety".

Every parent should be reading this memoir if they care about the development of their children. Hopefully, this book will spurn some discussion about how they raise their children in this era.

A solid five star read, gift this book to anyone who is expecting, raising small children, or teachers. It's a call to rethink what we are doing to small beings who we hope we are raising well.

SMALL ANIMALS is a newly released book by Kim Brooks from which she has adapted an essay, "Motherhood in the Age of Fear," for The New York Times. That piece was trending for days so clearly the changing ideas about parenthood and the emotions involved are hot topics. SMALL ANIMALS is a fairly slim text which begins with a chapter on "The Day I Left My Son in the Car" and goes on to examine the consequences for Brooks and her family of what a stranger viewed as criminally negligent parenting. She shares her personal experiences, but also offers commentary and analysis on the anxious, overprotective, and often competitive parenting that has evolved in America. SMALL ANIMALS is not as much of a "hands-on" parenting guide as I had originally expected, but parents, mothers especially, will relate to many of Brooks' observations such as when she had dinner with several childless women: "They had different kinds of relationships with different kinds of people. Their identities were still malleable, multidimensional. They were still, in some essential way, the heroes of their own stories." Likewise, students studying authoritative, authoritarian, and indulgent parenting styles may find this text helpful (Brooks includes about six pages of notes and references) and an insightful perspective on questions of balancing freedom and control with children. Starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal.

Link to New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-the-age-of-fear.html

Parents decide to allow their 9 year-old to ride the subway by himself. A single mother lets her daughter play at a park while she works her part-time job during the summer. A mom leaves her four year-old in the car to play on his iPad for a few minutes while she runs into a store. All different choices. Your reactions may range from complete understanding of the situation to mild discomfort to “She should have her kids taken away.” But that reaction reflects not so much on your internal moral compass as it does social factors such as age, gender, parental status, socioeconomic status, etc. If you are a middle-class mother under the age of 45, you are significantly more likely to have strong feelings on these short vignettes about mothering choices. In Small Animals, Kim Brooks makes the case that we should not only be aware of the factors that are shaping these reactions but also the effects of the status quo it creates for both mothers and children. What exactly is that status quo?

Fear.

You see, Brooks was that third mother who left her son in the car on an iPad while she went inside to get one thing from Target. She came back, and someone had taken a video of her son in the car and called the police. Brooks uses this experience and her very nuanced feelings about it to investigate the plight of American parents today. Regardless of the morality of her decision (I sense that she is both not sure if hers was the right decision and incensed that another person would get involved), Brooks makes the case that the fear surrounding being a parent (and especially leaving children unsupervised for any amount of time) is out of control. She writes:

Parenthood … stretches us in ways not many experiences can. But at the same time, I began to realize, there was something about it made people worse or, at least, worse to each other — worse neighbors, worse citizens, worse friends. That something, I’d come to see, was not parenthood itself but the anxiety that so often surrounds it. Parenthood and fear: somehow, somewhere along the line, the two had become synonymous.

I have so many thoughts about this book, and so many questions about exactly which of the theories of parenting Brooks interacts with are those she espouses. But then again, that’s not exactly her point in writing it. I saw three major themes that both connected with me and I wanted to expound upon: 1) A mothering culture that breeds fear and judgment, 2) the lack any expectations for dads, and 3) a plea for moderation.

Brooks speaks of her own fears about parenting that began during pregnancy and persisted afterward: the questions, the doubts, the state of being sure that you are doing something wrong and messing up your kid for life. While I haven’t experienced these fears personally (dads have less pressure; see below), I am intimately familiar with it on a secondhand basis and can confirm that this is a very, VERY common occurrence among mothers (My wife confirms this as well). Brooks goes into detail about these fears and where they come from, but it has gone from a personal struggle to a societal problem. One woman whom Brooks interviews states:

I suppose I can’t quite tell where my own anxieties end and other people’s begin. I don’t know if I’m afraid for my kids, or if I’m afraid other people will be afraid and will judge me for my lack of fear.
And that judgment would make sense if the fears were rational. But many societal fears up to and including stranger abduction are simply not supported by anything but anecdotal and sensationalized stories. The source of that judgment does become clear, however, if you consider how our American society works now, at least when it comes to motherhood. Brooks writes:

When being a parent is elevated to the most important thing you will ever do, a thing you in particular have chosen, a special duty and responsibility that only some accept, the stakes rise. If parenthood is no longer just a relationship or a part of “ordinary life” but instead a new kind of secular religion, then true tolerance of each other’s parenting differences becomes a lot more complicated and a lot less common.
While Brooks and I would disagree on what exactly is the most important thing you will ever do if it is not parenting, I think she hits on something very important when she talks about tolerance of parenting differences being a lost characteristic of society. She makes the case that you should respect others’ parenting decisions unless a child is in true danger, not just a situation in which you can imagine something terrible happening. I am inclined to agree.

It is clear from the beginning of Brooks’ narrative that this culture of fear is exclusive to mothers. Fathers are not expected to carry that weight, and they don’t. I know I don’t, and I can’t think of a dad who is consumed with anxiety about his kids to the degree that a large number of mothers are. There are many stories in Small Animals of parents making the same decision Brooks made: leaving a child in the car while they run in somewhere for a couple of minutes, usually staying in sight of the children where nothing could have happened, only to return to harassment from another parent at a minimum and usually a police officer. But one of the stories ends quite differently, when the husband of Brooks’ subjects leaves a sleeping child in the car to take food into a building for his wife for 3 to 4 minutes. He returns to the car to see a couple of upset mothers and a police officer. The police officer tells the women he’ll handle it, then when he and the husband are alone he essentially says “I understand. We all do it sometimes. But you can’t do it in (insert name of suburb), these women are crazy.” Brooks also writes of a psychological researcher she interviewed extensively and the research she conducted on gender differences when it comes to parental judgments:

One of the findings of Barbara Sarnecka’s study on risk assessment and moral judgment, the study in which people were asked to evaluate the danger children were in when left alone under different circumstances — and the moral “wrongness” of the parent who had left them — was that when participants were told a father had left his child for a few minutes to run into work, the level of risk to his child was equal to the risk when he left the child because of circumstances beyond his control (when he was struck unconscious by a car). When a woman was running into work, the moral judgment was closer to the level expressed at her going shopping or having an affair. I’ll admit it — I love this finding. I relish the way it makes plain and undeniable something we all sort of know but aren’t supposed to say: We might accept that mothers occasionally want to do other things besides mothering, that they might want to have a career, a social life, a full human existence. But we don’t like it. We hate it, in fact. A father who is distracted for a few minutes by his myriad interests and obligations in the world of adult interactions is being, well, a father. A mother who does the same is failing her children.
My thoughts, as a dad: This is unfair and unacceptable. If we continue to let society hold mothers to a higher standard than fathers, they will keep bearing more of the responsibility and pressure until things get much, much worse than they already are. Please, everyone, hold me to the same standard you would my wife. If you consider that unreasonable to expect of a dad, reconsider your probably-unrealistic expectations for a mother.

I have already rambled on for too long, but it is important to point out Brooks’ point of view with all these vignettes of motherhood and judgment. I don’t think she is necessarily saying you should let your nine year-old child ride the New York subway alone, as one of her subjects did. I don’t think she is saying you should necessarily let your daughter play at the park while you work at McDonald’s a mile away, although she does empathize with the mother who did that as the only way she could support her family. What I see Brooks making a plea for is moderation.

The obvious question, if you are advocating for less strict supervision of children, is that of opportunity cost. What is the cost of being so highly involved in your child’s life 100% of the time? It obviously has a cost for mothers, but what are children missing out on. That wonderful but nebulous concept of independence. Should you let your child go to the store by themselves to pick up bread? I don’t see the gain in that, but some people do. Weigh the costs and benefits of your parenting style. In a conversation with another mother, Brooks advocates for taking a moderate approach to parenting instead of the radicalism that pervades mothering culture:

“Well, it’s a balance, isn’t it? I mean, we want our kids to know that we see them. I see you, and I understand your needs, and your needs matter to me. I think for my parents’ generation, kids were less visible, parents less present. And so everyone wants to correct for that. We want to show our kids that we’re there for them, we’re in the game with them and we care. Which is all good. But it seems like we’ve gone so far in that direction.”
From my perspective among mostly conservative Christians, I see parents that go too far in both directions. Some are intensely involved in their children’s lives to a radical extent, and some are advocates of the “free range parenting” on which one of Brooks’ subjects literally wrote the book. I think a call for moderation is good, and reasonable tolerance of others’ parenting decisions is necessary. To save both our mothers and our children, we must do better.

If these topics interest you, I highly recommend reading Kim Brooks’ new book, Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear, which releases August 21, 2018. You won’t agree with nearly all of it, but it is one of those books that I believe is important to read regardless of your views about parenting.

I received this book as an eARC courtesy of Flatiron Books and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Kim Brooks opens the book with her own story, a story of leaving her 5 year old son in the car when she ran into Target for 10 minutes and having CPS called on her. The story was used to anchor interviews and research about parenting in a modern fear-based culture run by the outrage machine.

I related to many things she said and can see how my own fear struggles impact my parenting. I believe in the concept of giving kids freedom to roam and discover (part of the reason I enjoy living in a small town) but often have difficulty putting that belief into practice.

The book is thought-provoking and I mostly enjoyed it.

Small Animals by Kim Brooks explores daunting questions about modern parenting through the author's personal experience and research. How are we judged as "good" parents and our children as successful while considering issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status? How are we moved by the status games and the parenting competitions we play while scrolling through our feeds? Always mindful as we look forward and make those choices or, in many cases, imposed decisions about method of delivery, summer enrichment, daycares or the multitude of other weighty, anxiety-driven responsibilities we impose upon ourselves. 

Her candid writing is centered around an incident in which she left her son in the car while she ran into Target. An anonymous woman filmed the child in the car and notified the police. Brooks details this story while intertwining pieces of research from well-known parenting books and interviews with parenting experts.

The book's scope seems too narrow to create a total picture of many of the fears and issues involved in parenting. It comes across as an extended article or not long enough to be a full study of parenting in book form. While she touches on other problems like physical and mental health, these sections lack the depth needed to examine the problems fully. Too much of the book revolves around her incident, ones like it, and the perceived harms a child could encounter. 

Kim Brooks's Small Animals is a personal and honest look at dealing with the "moral panics" of raising a child. It is a good read from a writer with a strong voice, but it didn't go far enough in completing many of the viable arguments. 

Thank you to NetGalley, Flatiron Books, and Kim Brooks for the advanced copy for review.

This book is superb! I'd give it more stars of i could.
My youngest is now 29, so I 'm not raising a little one anymore. I'm so glad that he lived in an era to go out and play with friends or ride his bike. I can see the decline in real parenting. It's more hovering than actual parenting. This book gives good examples of what is happening to parents today. Well done! So sorry that that happened to author!
Thanks to author,publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this book.
While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating i gave it.

This book didn't live up to its blurb. It seems to speak more to parents who lack confidence in their parenting, who really worry about keeping up with and how they appear to others. Although the author acknowledges her own privilege, there's still an icky layer of ableism and classism throughout. Her points felt scattered and unfocused. When a significant point/angle did come up, it wasn't fleshed out before moving on. Not a satisfying read.

This is an excellent book for parents of children of any age. It's part memoir as the idea for the book starts with the author's personal story of getting arrested for leaving her son in the car alone for a few minutes. It then explores the history of parenting in America, and the psychology of parenting and how parenting effects the psychology of our children. It is well researched, interesting, and an easy, at times funny read. I highly recommend it for all parents.