How to ruin a child
A journey into the alarming, hilarious and ever-changing advice given to Australian parents.
Behind every generation of Australian parents stood an army of advisors – magazine columnists, expert authors, nurses, priests, and government agencies. Most of those experts were very certain about their own rules. Any deviation would produce a dire result: you’d ruin a child.
Yet, over time, the advice kept changing.
Each generation was told that the last generation had it all wrong. How peculiar that most of the experts did not have children of their own.
But, for the current generation of parents, history offers a consolation. When relatives, and other critics, tell young parents that they are ‘doing it all wrong’, and that different (usually stricter) methods would make everything go smoothly, the experience of Australian parents over time is wonderfully reassuring. Parenting is tough, however you do it, and the outcome, however you do it, is usually a perfectly fine human.
“Funny, intelligent and very useful – it will make you trust yourself more and relax into the moment with your kids, which is what they need most.” – Steve Biddulph
“A parenting book where you get to laugh out loud. Every parent deserves to read it” – Madonna King
“Ridiculously funny and breathtakingly profound, this book is the present every new parent needs” – Rebecca Sparrow
“This brilliantly written, forensically researched, laugh out loud lampooning of parenting manuals should be a mandatory gift in every maternity ward” – Kathy Lette
“Richard Glover gets parenting right in this book. You can trust me. I’m an expert!” – Justin Coulson
Richard Glover
About the Author
Richard Glover’s most recent book is How to Ruin a Child – a journey into the alarming, hilarious and ever-changing advice given to Australian parents.
He is also author of Best Wishes, a book about making the world a better, less annoying place, one wish at a time; and of Love, Clancy – a collection of the letters sent home by his dog Clancy to his parents in the bush. His bestseller The Land Before Avocado is an account of the bizarre Australia of the late 60s and early 70s.
Richard’s previous books also include Flesh Wounds, which was voted one of the top five books of the year by viewers of ABC television’s “The Book Club” and won the Readers’ Choice Award as Biography of the Year in the 2016 Australian Book Industry Awards.
Richard has written regularly for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Washington Post. For many years, he presented the comedy program Thank God It’s Friday on ABC local radio.
Best Wishes
Making the world a better, less annoying place one wish at a time.
Do you hate noisy restaurants, pre-ripped jeans and pedestrians who walk five abreast?
Do you also have a problem with plastic-wrapped fruit, climate-change deniers and take-away sandwiches priced at $14.95?
And, most of all, do you think the world would be a better place if people got back their sense of humour?
Here’s proof you are not alone. Heartfelt and hilarious, serious but sly, Best Wishes is the encyclopedia of ‘can do better’. It’s a plea for a better world – one wish at a time.
“I wish I could think, hope, laugh, dream and, indeed, write like Richard Glover. And I wish every Australian could read this book. A soaring tribute to the power of wishful thinking.” – Trent Dalton
“Charming, funny and sincere, this is yet another winning book from the only Boomer worth listening to. A triumph!” – Tom Ballard
“He is right about leaf blowers, for example, but quite wrong about breakfast in bed… Richard’s view of the world will frequently have you punching the air and shouting, “Yes!”” – Jean Kittson
Love, Clancy
Heartfelt and hilarious, this is a book for anyone who has tried to imagine what their dog was thinking.
Human beings often write about their dogs, but the dogs don’t usually get a right of reply. In “Love, Clancy”, Richard Glover has collated the letters sent by Clancy to his parents in the bush. They are full of a young dog’s musings about the oddities of human behaviour, life in the big city, and his own attempts to fit in. You’ll meet Clancy as a puppy, making his first attempt to train his humans, then see him grow into a mature activist, demanding more attention be paid to a dog’s view of the world. Along the way, there are adventures aplenty, involving robotic vacuum cleaners, songs about cheese, trips to the country and stolen legs of ham – all told with a dog’s deep wisdom when it comes to what’s important in life.
“Unnervingly accurate, always funny, Richard Glover effortlessly inhabits the fine mind of a dog” – Julia Baird
The Land Before Avocado
Publisher: HarperCollins
This is a vivid portrait of a quite peculiar land: the Australia of the late ’60s and early ’70s. The Land Before Avocado will make you laugh and cry, feel angry and inspired. And leave you wondering how bizarre things were, not so long ago. Let’s break the news now: they didn’t have avocado.
‘This is vintage Glover – warm, wise and very, very funny. Brimming with excruciating insights into life in the late sixties and early seventies, The Land Before Avocado explains why this was the cultural revolution we had to have‘ – Hugh Mackay
‘Hilarious and horrifying, this is the ultimate intergenerational conversation starter‘ – Annabel Crabb
Flesh Wounds
Richard Glover’s favourite dinner party game is called ‘Who’s Got the Weirdest Parents?’. It’s a game he always thinks he’ll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard’s English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. Part poignant family memoir, part hopeful search for the truth, this is a book for anyone who’s wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: ‘No’. There is always something stranger.
Bill Bryson, New York Times
The Sydney Morning Herald
“Engrossing and extremely funny”
The Saturday Paper
The Sun-Herald
“A new classic … a breathtaking accomplishment in style and empathy”
The Australian
“Not since ‘Unreliable Memoirs’ by Clive James has there been a funnier, more poignant portrait of an Australian childhood”
The Australian Financial Review
The Mud House: Four friends, One block of land, No power tools
Publisher: HarperCollins
This frank, funny and thought-provoking memoir describes how Richard and his friend Philip built a mud brick house in the bush on weekends. This huge and exhausting undertaking — it took eight years simply to make the bricks — examines what it means to be a man, the nature of male friendships, improvised housebuilding techniques, and the extraordinary accomplishment of making something with your own hands.
Other Books
Why Men Are Necessary
In Bed with Jocasta
George Clooney’s Haircut
Desperate Husbands
The Dag’s Dictionary
The No-minute Noodler: Dag’s Dictionary for Kids
The Joke Trap
The Dirt Experiment
