Exhausted, frazzled, and at sea after the birth of her two children, Traig began to interrogate the traditional parenting advice she'd been conditioned to accept at face value. The result is a deft-- and hilarious-- dissection of the history of Western parenting, moving from ancient Rome to Puritan New England to the Dr. Spock craze of mid-century America. Have our techniques actually evolved into something better? Or are we still just scrambling in the dark?