They're All About Family

By Andrea Sachs; Megan Rutherford

PROTECTING THE GIFT: KEEPING CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS SAFE (AND PARENTS SANE) By Gavin de Becker (Dial Press) Trust your intuition. That's the message from De Becker, who advises the rich and famous from Hollywood to Washington on security matters. But parents don't need to be celebrities to benefit from his sage counsel. De Becker's book gives families million-dollar advice for $22.95. If a baby sitter makes you uneasy, writes De Becker, listen to your inner voice. Pay heed if your child is uncomfortable around a particular adult. Make careful choices about the people you include in your child's life. Remember: the issue is not strangers but strangeness. De Becker empowers parents to best protect their children from unsafe day-care centers and schools, as well as sexual predators. "As you understand how intuition helps protect your children, you'll react to smoke and not wait for fire," says De Becker. There's not a parent who wouldn't benefit from reading this wise book. --By Andrea Sachs

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR: STORIES OF VALUES AND VIRTUES By Arthur Dobrin (Scholastic) Two zebras from rival herds overcome prejudice by falling in love. A tiny gerbil helps a couple of ostriches harvest a giant beet. Strength of character, rather than muscle, enables the heroes of this cozy collection of children's stories to perform amazing feats of kindness, understanding and cooperation. The text, written by a clergyman, refrains from preaching, and the illustrations by Jacqueline Rogers are sweet but not saccharine. Each of the 13 moral tales ends with a question, providing a natural segue to discussion. The book is targeted at children ages 4 to 8, but parents and older kids will also enjoy these refreshing, often thought-provoking little fables. --By Megan Rutherford

LOVE MAKES A FAMILY: PORTRAITS OF LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PARENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES Photographs by Gigi Kaeser, edited by Peggy Gillespie (University of Massachusetts Press) In most respects, these are ordinary families. "Our family life is a very traditional American one," says Doug Robinson, a member of one of the families, "--early-morning getting up, eating breakfast, getting dressed, making sure everyone has matching socks, getting the boys off to school and then going to work." But these families face a unique daily challenge: the intolerance of colleagues, relatives, neighbors and classmates. In this remarkable family album of photographs and interviews, nonheterosexual parents and their children reveal the hardships and joys of being different. In many cases, struggle brings its own rewards. Says Judith Stevenson: "We live in a kind of family that isn't shown very often on television or spoken about in Sunday schools. Our children grow up knowing that it's O.K. to be different, and I can't help but believe that this knowledge makes them better people." --M.R.

HALVING IT ALL: HOW EQUALLY SHARED PARENTING WORKS By Francine M. Deutsch (Harvard University Press) The author is a professor of psychology, but her interest in parental equality is not merely academic. After spending six years in graduate school and five more in the job market before landing a faculty position at Mount Holyoke College, Deutsch knew she would be unwilling to give up her career to rear children. Nor could she face the rigors of being a superwoman, juggling full-time work and the vast majority of parenting tasks. So she interviewed 150 dual-earner couples to see how they divvied up child rearing. What she discovered is encouraging. Couples who want to share parenting fifty-fifty can find ways to do so. Many people, however, have difficulty defying the cultural templates imbedded in their psyches: women complained they were shouldering too much of the parenting but refused to relinquish control, while men claimed they wanted to participate but just couldn't get the hang of doing laundry or cooking dinner. Fortunately, Deutsch offers a menu of new templates for parenting, forged by couples in her study who fought for equality and won unexpected rewards in the balance. --M.R.