I was looking to read a book on parenting, not on white supremacy and capitalism. I am not rating anywhere else since I did not finish.

Parenting Beyond Power is awesome! If you are looking for ways to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ and ‘treat others the way you would like to be treated’ here is an great parenting manual for finding ways to do just that, starting in your home.

I will be recommending this book to every parent.

I found the content that spoke directly to healing damaging patriarchal, capitalist and racist systems (insidious in W.E.I.R.D. societies) super beneficial. I have pre-ordered my own copy of the book and will refer back to it often I expect, to assist in aligning my parenting with my values.

I can’t wait for book number 2!

I've read many parenting books and for the most part I'm happy to take what I like from them and leave what I don't like. I was happy that this book had stuff that I really liked, even if it's not all easy to implement. Since I follow this authors podcast I knew going into it her opinion and views on things that are bigger picture things like societal issues. I admire Jen to push us to think of these things.

Parenting through collaboration is something that resonates with me as it is not how I was parented and I can see the benefits of creating a relationship with my small child now that'll be the foundation for how we interact with each other for the rest of our lives. My plan is not to hope for the best through the teenage years, my plan is to enjoy every stage of parenting.

I enjoyed the format this book was written in and when I finished I did wish for more so I do hope more books come from her.

Brilliant!

I wish I knew this before becoming a parent. Lumanlan's opus on parenting is riveting. Easy-to-use practical tools to make parenting easier NOW!

Highly recommended for parents of young kids, but still applicable for older kids.

There are a lot of parenting books out there that offer advice on what is best for your child based on the latest available evidence. There are far fewer parenting books that also delve into what parents really need, too. And this is the first parenting book that I have read that puts into context the broader systems that make parenting so hard -- *and* so critical for shifting the way we relate within our families and beyond.

Parenting Beyond Power offers three things: (1) practical strategies to deal with parenting challenges, alongside concrete examples and "cheat sheets" for implementing these strategies; (2) an analysis and acknowledgement of why parenting is so hard in the current systems in which we live; and (3) motivation for how the ideas in this book can be not only transformative within your own family, but in the broader community as well.

It strikes me that even someone who is turned off by the broader social justice lens of this book would have an awful lot to take away from the practical strategies it offers. That said, readers who are motivated by these larger goals will gain the most as they see how the strategies in the book will enable them to live their values more fully.

I thank NetGalley and Lumanlan for allowing me to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Jen Lumanlan digs into a new approach to parenting in her book. While I liked her efforts to present a research-based framework, I couldn't help but notice her business (coaching, workshops, etc.) being heavily promoted throughout the book. While it's acceptable for authors to talk about their services, it sometimes feels overbearing and detracted from the main content. Lumanlan does provide some useful ideas and tools. This book provides insight for parents looking for alternative parenting practices..Parents eager to start applying new techniques will find overviews, illustrative examples, flowcharts and sample scripts throughout the book.

Discover a transformative book that guides you in uncovering your authentic parenting voice! Throughout my exploration of various parenting guides, I encountered valuable insights, yet a crucial element always seemed to be absent. Enter Jen, who adeptly addresses this void. This book delves into the fundamental aspect of needs—both those of parents and children—and skillfully illustrates how to harmonize them. Prepare yourself to embrace the message, for this book has the potential to profoundly reshape your parenting approach. It doesn't solely furnish practical parental advice; it also prompts reflection on our inclination towards specific parenting styles (seriously, why are we so inclined to overly control our children?!) and the challenges they present. Jen encourages us to not only nurture improved parent-child connections but also, primarily, to cultivate a better world. A reading imperative!

Parenting Beyond Power shines a powerful light on the cultural reasons (rarely addressed and often subconscious) parenting is often _so much harder_ than we expected it to be.

More than just your typical parenting book extolling structured routines, child-led attachment or something in-between, it’s the tying together of the bigger picture with the day-to-day challenges of family life - while offering accessible solutions to those challenges - that makes the approach in Jen Lumenlan’s debut book so profound.

While lots of parenting advice and approaches focus exclusively on how parents should, well, approach needs, behaviors and challenges with their child(ren), Parenting Beyond Power invites readers to consider their OWN needs as part of the equation, which can feel pretty darn revolutionary, especially for parents who are feeling burned out and at the end of their rope.

The cultural context provided for WHY it’s so easy and typical for parents (especially mothers) to deprioritize or completely ignore their own needs offers a much-needed balm. Instead of yet another “should” that a parent might fail to do "properly", we are invited to shift our thinking that parenting isn’t hard because we’re not good enough or trying hard enough - parenting is hard because of the cultural soup we’re parenting within. For readers already concerned with the impacts of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, some lightbulbs will definitely go off while reading this book.

Lumenlan packs a lot into a small space. The chapters feel very succinct and make for quick reading, but there’s a lot going on conceptually in each.

Parents eager to start applying new techniques will find overviews, illustrative examples, flowcharts and sample scripts throughout the book. I could see readers skimming through to get straight to these tools to help jump-start things.

The perspectives on culture may feel pretty novel depending on where you’re coming from, and it might take a re-read or two for them to start to sink in. The techniques outlined in Parenting Beyond Power can improve family life no matter how deeply you read the rest of the book; the book can offer even more to readers with capacity to spend more time with the overarching concepts and values underpinning those techniques.

This is a very different parenting book. As I began to read it I almost got turned off by the constant white privileges brought.

The author gives some pretty good tips, but I just wish she didn't have to bring race or color into it.

Yes, I understand it's all around us, but when I go for a parenting book, I'm not looking for anything more.

This book comes out hard with the controversial topics! It is evidence based and factual, though I feel that those who need the message most won't even rage read it. The information provided is needed, and provides more information behind social justice in parenting.
I also know that while I would love to use this book in practice with my clients, based on my location I would lose credibility. Fantastic book, comes on a little strong, but my preference is for more subtle information.

I am struggling on how to rate this book. There are some good practices listed here. The ones I really connect to are not new practices for me but I appreciate them and think if this was a parent's first foray into respectful parenting, that they would be helpful. I did not connect well with the writing style or how the chapters were laid out. I am trying to figure out if that is a formatting issue with the ebook that will hopefully be fixed before publication but it made it hard to read and enjoy. I unfortunately also think that in the author's desire to combine parenting with cultural lessons, it hurt the flow and left each area lacking. The portion of the book dealing with these topics does delve fully into them and I think will leave parents who don't already share the author's viewpoint, struggling to connect. The front cover also doesn't make it apparent that this is what the reader is getting.

When it comes down to it, while the author has some great practices to share, the commentary around it fell flat for me.

Jen Lumanlan has written a compelling book with a fresh take on parenting that weaves in thoughts about how a racist, capitalist, and patriarchal world filters down into our person-to-person interactions with our children. I found the last few chapters to have especially helpful reminders of how to confront one's own ignorance and set on a path of ongoing learning and growth - and, I almost didn't get to that point in the book because so found it difficult to read the first few chapters.

Lumanlan launches into "Parenting Beyond Power" with a tone of authority without establishing a solid rapport with the reader first. I felt like I was being lectured to about how the world works. I've found it easier to connect with parenting books when there is a combination of humility along with inquiry. That said, there's some great wisdom in this book and I especially appreciate how Lumanlan troubleshoots potential pitfalls while bringing the problem solving approach to situations with our children. How we do one thing can be how we do anything, so I like the link between parenting approaches and our approach to relationships in general.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book took two separate book ideas and shoved them violently together so that the effect is both confusing and doesn’t do justice to either topic.

The first “book” I’ll call “How modern Parenting is influenced by white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism” was not mentioned on the front cover, and it was in the bottom paragraph of the synopsis section. So when it turned out to be the main theme of the book, it startled me a bit. The tone of the preface through the first chapter makes me think she’s on a soapbox more than anything - the author does not present a persuasive argument on the topic and it’s done so in a way I find it hard to believe that anyone who doesn’t already agree with her on her views about white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism will read beyond the first chapter. Which would be a shame, because she has some very interesting points on all three. It’s just not presented in a manner that will be digestible for the population she says this book was written for - this book, as stated in the letter from the author is primarily intended for White people though she hopes more BIPOC will benefit also. Unfortunately, her presentation style limits this population to just the ones who already agree with her about each. She starts opens with the nefarious effects of white supremacy. Many do not wish to see it, and this book doesn’t take the time to fully define and leave space for the cognitive dissonance recognition leaves in its wake. It just moves fluidly from topic to topic - moving over into capitalism. The country this book was written in was primarily built on the fundamentals of capitalism, and I’m not defending it, but dismantling ideas that “capitalism is good” cannot happen in the short time given to the topic within the chapter. Then the patriarchy had a similar treatment. The purpose of that first chapter was to set the foundation for the rest of the ideas in the book. But the first chapter could have been a book. It needed to be a book to fully go into all the nuances those topics require.

The second chapter is where we see the secondary book theme begin to show up “parenting beyond power.” Unfortunately, the primary theme spends more time trying to usurp the book and the ideas and topics and helpful scripts for connection based parenting are fighting for the spotlight. And please, don’t hear me wrong, I’m not saying the primary theme is in and of itself bad, but the presentation of it will absolutely not draw people who do not agree with conscious parenting to want to parent more respectfully to their children. Because that message is buried between other themes and arguments the book promotes in such a way that you’d only want to read if you agreed with her assessment of the first and primary theme. So my prediction is that her community and people who feel the same way she does will love this book, but I’m afraid it will not compel others to critical thinking on these topics. Which again, is disappointing because I do believe that parenting consciously and respectfully can and will absolutely change the world. But this book has too much going on with it to make a person who does not already practice conscious parenting to want to give it a try. This book does have good discussions on consequences vs punishments and it has some great scripts designed to really find the underlying need when your child is having a hard time. I do feel like she could have spent more time with the mindset shift required to parent more consciously. Which makes me think she’s talking to people who already *want* and believe they can parent more respectfully and not so much the parents who are trying to figure out how they might parent beyond the power struggles. I am such a parent, so I did agree with many of her ideas about treating children respectfully— but when I was new to conscious parenting, this book would have left me behind. I would have tried the scripts and held onto them like a lifeline, but conscious parenting has never been about the scripts. It’s about how we view and see our children and scripts without a change of mindset will leave you floundering. Ultimately- this book wasn’t for me.

I’d like to thank the publisher Sasquatch Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

In her book, parenting educator Jen Lumanlan dives into a fresh approach to parenting, emphasizing collaboration over traditional power dynamics. While I appreciated her efforts to provide a research-based framework, I couldn't help but notice the heavy promotion of her personal business (ie: coaching, workshops, etc) throughout the book. While it's understandable for authors to mention their services, it felt a bit overwhelming at times and detracted from the core content. That being said, Lumanlan does offer some valuable insights and practical tools. Despite my reservations about the heavy self-promotion, there are still nuggets of wisdom to be found within these pages for parents seeking alternative parenting strategies.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read the eARC in exchange for an honest review.