Emily Bazelon reviews Pamela Paul’s new book. “How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers — and What It Means for Our Children.”

Parenting books tend to fall into two categories. There are the advice books that play on readers’ anxieties, urging parents to scale ever greater heights on behalf of their kids. (Try harder! Move faster! Buy more!) And then there are the anti-advice books that promise to deflect all of this anxiety-mongering by helping parents ward off the latest sales pitch.
Pamela Paul and Carl Honoré seek to fit into this second category. And yet their books are as anxious about staving off anxiety as any advice book is about stoking it. The effect is a bit like being told to calm down by someone whose neck veins are bulging.
Paul’s focus is on the money that parents spend, and her premise is pretty unassailable: It’s hard not to buy things for your kid, especially if you can afford it. Paul calls this “the anxiety of underspending.” Baring her own wallet, she writes, “No matter what I do, someone else seems to be doing enviably more or improbably less, and either way, their child and family seem all the better for it.”