I wish I could put a still from the Mitchell and Webb Look sketch, "Bitty." Go look it up, it's hilarious.

OK, having dealt with the obvious flawed premises, logical fallacies, and internal contradictions, I promised to unpack the subtext of Chapter 1 as well. Let me start by simply laying out relevant quotes, and see if you follow these to the same conclusion I did.

“The husband-wife union is not just a good first step toward child-rearing. It is a necessary one. Too often, parents lose sight of this fact, getting lost in a parenting wonderland of photos, footsteps, and first words.”

“Marriage is unique – totally without parallel. It transcends all other relationships.”

“Where the marriage is intact, keeping this relationship a priority is your starting point for successful parenting.”

“Too often when a child enters a family, parents leave their first love: each other. The spotlight shifts to illuminate the children, and the marriage gets lost in space.”

“Date your spouse. . . . Continue those loving gestures you enjoyed before the baby came along.”

See where I’m going with this? And don’t for a minute think that Ezzo is concerned equally with each spouse’s happiness. It seems very clear to me that these are exhortations to a new mother not to focus too much attention on her new baby, but to make sure she keeps her husband satisfied. See: (emphasis added in all quotes below)

“With child-centered or mother-centered parenting, parents intensely pursue the child’s happiness.” Seriously, he just throws “mother-centered” parenting in as an equivalent of child-centered parenting, without comment.

“When you become a mother, you do not stop being a daughter, a sister, a friend, or a wife. Those relationships, which were important before the baby, still must be maintained.”

“Date your spouse . . . The baby will not suffer separation anxiety from one night without mom.”

“If you buy a special something for baby, select a little gift for your mate as well.” Who generally buys items for the baby? Yeah, Mom. Or maybe I should call her Wife.

Oh, and I almost forgot this bizarre statement: “Since infants are entirely dependent on parental care, their dependency creates for new parents a heightened gratification.” What the hell? I can only guess, but this seems to be another jab at mothers being “overly involved” with baby care (i.e., taking appropriate care of a newborn), as though properly responding to an infant indicates some pathological need on the part of the mother. If someone can explain this non sequitur, please enlighten me.

I’ll just quote here the marginal notes I made when I twigged to all this: “OMG! This is written by a man who feared/resented having his boobies/mother figure taken away. What a weak, fearful, grasping man.”

Really. This book seems to have been written by a man so insecure, immature, and petty that he is jealous when his wife buys a present for their baby. So sad. And sadder still that he has conned thousands of people into following his, “NO, I want to be the baby!!!” philosophy, under the guise of responsible parenting.