An easy read merging two fascinating topics: animal behaviour and (human) parenting. The only problem is that these are both very broad topics: maybe I need to start looking for popsci books on narrower topics because I seem to be getting to the end of books and thinking "Yes that's a fascinating topic, if only I'd *learned* something from it." It just feels too shallow for my level of interest but I'm admittedly picky and my ideal is such a narrow sweet spot!

The chapters in this one cover parenting from conception through weaning, discipline, and adoption, to 'leaving the nest'. Each chapter contains a series of anecdotes of human parents - mostly friends of the author, or her own somewhat bitterly recalled childhood - and of animal parents from a wide range of species who take a range of approaches to similar challenges, by way of compare-and-contrast.

It's particularly interesting and depressing to note that animal discipline and teaching tends to be a lot more patient than the human counterparts, and that child abuse is much more rare among animals - unless the animals are under really severe stress. What have we done to our society to make it so common among humans? ( )