Your Children Are Boring by Tom James

Your Children Are Boring: or How Modern Parents Ruin Everything by Tom James

“The funniest book of the year”

Are you sick of a society that seems obsessed with children? Do you find modern parents insufferable?

Your Children Are Boring is a uniquely humorous look at our culture’s obsession with children, a world where virtually every advert has a squawking child in it, where pubs are full of wailing infants, and where every other Facebook post is tagged #ProudDad.

Why do parents themselves behave like infants? Why having a child doesn’t make you less selfish, why it’s extremely unlikely that your child is in fact, ‘special’, and why modern parenting is ruining everything, not least the kids themselves.

All the answers lie within, and it’s your duty to read it.

Yes, Your Children Are Boring will make you laugh, but it’s much more than that. Once consumed you must take its teachings into the world and fix society. Or something. Oh and if you put ‘Dad’ or ‘Mum’ in your social media bios, this book is aimed at you.

An excerpt from Your Children Are Boring:

“There are more radical solutions available to us of course. I take my lead from the way we’ve societally turned smokers into pariahs at pubs. Let’s create family areas in the pubs! Imagine, roped off areas out the back, covered in sick, where the tables are made of plastic rather than wood, soundproofed so we don’t have to listen to you loudly slow-talking, or the baby crying. Or you could just go to McDonalds, which is where the kids want to be anyway.

And that’s another thing; does anyone think these kids want to go to a pub? They’re not renowned for their rides and pits of plastic balls. But perhaps that’s just a matter of time. We’ll inevitably infantilise getting smashed like we seem intent on doing to everything else.

You want it all don’t you, your spoilt little brain thinks, ‘I’ve had a child, but that doesn’t mean I should modify my life. I still want pub, so baby come to pub!’ Kids should be, and probably are, bored out of their tiny minds at pubs. It’s where grown-ups go to bitch about their friends’ new kitchen or boyfriend / girlfriend, not a playground, that’s why they’re full of glass, fruit machines and sharp edges.

If we can be a little melodramatic though, you’re a virus. You’re ruining pubs like you ruined football and the cinema, colonizing it like the most boring invading army in history armed with iPhones and Kleenex.”

Book Review:

Your Children Are Boring by Tom James is a blunt and hilarious work that examines and discusses the issues with modern parenting. It does not advocate for the neglect of children’s needs by their parents, rather, it aims at helping parents identify the dangers of a children-obsessed society where conversations and policies revolve around children.

Author, Tom James handles the misconceptions that modern parents have about their roles and the lives of child-free adults. As he moves from one chapter to the next, he includes sobering statistics, observations, and quotes from external sources that uncover real, concerning issues. He combines these with discussions that explore significant topics such as parental awareness and the dangers of helicopter parenting. In a discussion about how many parents are unknowledgeable about parenting, the book includes the findings of a recent study that asserts that a third of the eleven to eighteen-year-olds polled stated that they had asked their parents to stop checking their mobile devices. Included anecdotes, recent remarks, and social media posts further show the immensity of the issue. The book adopts a common sense, direct approach to handling the topics it covers that cuts through to specific issues. It also incorporates humor that makes its discussions entertaining and persuasive. Though most of the work’s findings are derived from the UK, its lessons are universal. For instance, it examines troubling trends such as the current society’s saturation with the mind-set of therapy that categorizes major emotional and behavioral difficulties with minor issues which makes children overly dependent on external emotional support.