Parenting can be exhausting, frustrating, and demoralizing, but it can also be uplifting, amazing, and joyous. It has moments spanning the spectrum of emotion, but a little perspective can help you laugh through even the most challenging parts.
As parents, humor is a survival tool we find in memes, TikTok videos, comic strips, and, when we have the time, even books. It also reassures us that when we go through the most difficult and sometimes ridiculous experiences as parents, we’re not alone.
Here are some of the best funny parenting books we’ve found.
Go the F*** to Sleep
This book by Adam Mansbach encapsulates the overwhelmed sensation parents feel when it’s an hour and a half past bedtime, and there have already been too many requests for just one more glass of water (and one more trip to the bathroom, naturally), another bedtime story, a few more checks under the bed and in the closet for monsters, and so on.
You’re ready for the day to end, and your child won’t let go. You love this sweet, precious, darling little angel, but you are touched out and don’t have the energy to deal with even one more demand on your time and attention tonight. If that’s you, you’ll feel this book to your bones.
There Are Moms Way Worse Than You
We can only assume author Glenn Boozan had days when she wondered if she was failing her child, as many of us have as parents. It’s easy to wonder if you’re getting it all wrong when you’re running behind on laundry, buying frozen chicken nuggets to serve for dinner, and hiding in the pantry to sneak three Oreos in peace.
This book compares even the most struggling human moms to parents across the animal kingdom. For instance, you may have let your child have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast so you could steal ten extra minutes of sleep, but if you were a hamster, you might have eaten him for your breakfast instead.
How To Be A Little Sod
Author Simon Brett writes this book as though it’s the diary of a newborn, offering a child’s experience in driving parents to absolute distraction while growing up and going through milestones and developmental experiences, from first smile to escaping the playpen.
This baby is on the move, and parents will laugh out loud when they see their own frustrations from the infant’s point of view. It’s a book your child could have written if only they could write.
I Just Want To Pee Alone
If you’re the primary caregiver, the one your toddler won’t allow out of his sight, the one whose disappearance for even a moment is a disaster of unfathomable proportions, you’re already identifying with this book on the title alone. (Why do they need to stick those little fingers under the bathroom door so badly?)
You’ll also identify with the dozens of blogging moms who have contributed their stories and experiences to pack this book with tales of parenting burnout, dealing with a partner who isn’t pulling his weight, surviving pregnancy, and so much more.
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos
Some people get pregnant whether they want to or not. Others have an uphill battle to become pregnant and stay that way. For those trying to conceive, it’s an earnest endeavor — but Lucy Knisley manages to relay her own experience with gentle humor and a lot of commiseration.
It’s not often that a book can balance humor and a life-threatening pregnancy experience, but this tale, told in graphic novel format, will have you nodding along, smiling at the author’s sweet strength, and even laughing at her portrayal of some aspects of the battle to bring a child into the world.
Man vs. Child: One Dad’s Guide to the Weirdness of Parenting
What do you do about toddler meltdowns? Are you prepared to support your wife through childbirth? How will you handle it when you look at your precious newborn and all you see is a squished, awkward-looking little face that resembles a miniature old man more than the cutie-pie you were expecting?
Doug Moe has suggestions for these situations, ranging from the severe and practical to the irreverent and humorous. Anyone can enjoy this parenting manual, but dads are the target audience, and if you’re preparing to become a father, you’ll want to check it out.
The Baby Owner’s Manual
If you’re a parent who reads instruction manuals, this book is definitely for you. If you’re the sort who definitely doesn’t read instruction manuals but still really wants some solid information from experts (Author Louis Borgenicht is an M.D) about what to expect from the first year of your baby’s life, it’s probably still for you.
Though the subtitle—”Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance”—makes it clear that the contents are given in a humorous fashion, mimicking the style of a new appliance owner’s manual, the information itself is solid and serious. This book will walk you through feeding, diapering, childproofing, milestones, and health issues to watch for.
How Not To Gate Your Husband After Kids
Don’t get mad, get Dad…to pitch in and do his share. Remember when we talked about sharing the mental load? Author Jancee Dunn remembers. She describes realizing that, despite becoming a parent at the same time her husband did, she was the one who was deemed the expert at diapers.
There are great dads and husbands out there. Still, if you’re one of the many moms who have discovered that you’re doing all the work of parenting, chores, and running a household. In contrast, your husband is the only one getting leisure time and days off, this book will help you navigate rebalancing your marriage—and make you laugh as you do it.
Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay
Remember the first time someone judged how you were feeding your baby? Whether you chose to breastfeed, bottlefeed, or a combination of the two, odds are at least one stranger felt the need to tell you why your choice was wrong. Then they stuck around also to let you know that whichever way you put your baby to sleep (cosleeping? crib? cuddling to sleep? putting down while baby is still awake?) was also wrong.
Stefanie Wilder-Taylor is over the unwanted advice, and if you are too, she’s written a book to make it easier to laugh off and assure you that you’re doing alright. As a bonus, she’s done it in a series of short essays that you’ll have time to read between bottles and bedtimes, and telling grandma that you appreciate her thoughts but you’ve got it covered.
Haynes Explains Babies
Here’s another parenting book, this one by Boris Starling (author of crime thrillers and other books in the Haynes Explains series, addressing topics from teenagers to the British). It is styled like an instruction manual and includes chapters such as “Assembly” (typically referred to in more mainstream parenting texts as “pregnancy”), “Refueling,” and “Pit Stops.”
If you’re great at using manuals to troubleshoot an engine but not so hot at handling diapers and bottles, this manual will present these and other challenges in a format you’ll find recognizable and accessible and will make childcare as easy as puttering around the garage.
Fowl Language: The Struggle Is Real
You may be familiar with Brian Gordon’s webcomic, Fowl Language, from your favorite social media feeds. He does a fantastic job presenting the joys and horrors of parenting (okay, mostly the horrors) through ducks. The Struggle Is Real is his second book, which collects a series of these comics together.
If you don’t even have time to sneak off to the bathroom alone, much less sit and read a book in peace, you’ll appreciate the brevity of tales told in a panel or three that perfectly encapsulate the parenting experience.
The Boss Baby
Though Marla Frazee’s The Boss Baby inspired the movie of the same name, the book is more about how babies come home and immediately take over the household. The new baby has demands, and the rest of the family is on duty.
How much can one tiny baby change the entire workings of a household? Completely. Frazee makes humor out of the chaos of a family trying to balance the needs of a newborn with the previously established routine.
Welcome to the Club: 100 Parenting Milestones You Never Saw Coming
We’ve all looked at our infant and imagined the first time he rolls over, crawls, or takes a step without assistance. We dream of first words, first smiles, and first laughs. Nobody warned us about the first major diaper blowout in a public place or the first time worrying if the baby is still breathing while strapped into his car seat safely in the backseat and facing away from the adults.
Fortunately for us all, Raquel D’Apice has collected these and other unexpected milestones so that we can be forewarned or at least know we aren’t alone in these little day-to-day complications.
These four authors, Alicia Ybarbo, Mary Ann Zoellner, Laurie Kilmartin, and Karen Moline, have put together a guide for moms who may not have it all together enough to perform for TikTok and Pinterest. For the rest of us, they have warnings on exactly how hard a road trip with kids can be, how long a dropped pacifier can be on the ground before a thorough washing is essential, and obtaining help from your ‘village’ whether or not they’re fully onboard.
If you’re dealing with parental peer pressure and aren’t sure that you’re quite living up to societal expectations but do want to know that your baby will thrive and grow into a capable and productive adult, this one is for you.
I Want My Epidural Back: Adventures in Mediocre Parenting
Honestly, are those perfect parents even real? Karen Alpert joins the parade of authors assuring us that parents who don’t produce bento box art lunches, cook a healthy, balanced meal every night, and lead Girl Scout troops are actually still raising kids who will be just fine.
She addresses such fraught topics as getting your kid into school and finally getting to take a free breath, keeping your kid awake in the car (or failing to do so), screen time, and that perennial parental horror, the bathroom incident. The first lesson, she tells us, is that giving birth is not the hard part.