Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child

by James Breakwell

This isn’t a book about overachieving at parenting. 

This isn’t even a book about achieving exactly the right amount. 

This is a book about doing as little as possible without quite ruining your child. 

Overachieving parents want you to believe the harder you work, the better your kid will turn out. That lie ends now. 

The truth is most kids end up remarkably unremarkable no matter what you do, so you might as well achieve mediocrity by the easiest possible route. The goal of “bare minimum parenting” is to turn your child into a functional adult with only a fraction of the effort spent by super moms and dads. 

If you do it right, your kid will be no better or worse off than their kids, but with more free time left for you. That's more valuable than all the participation trophies in the world.

In Bare Minimum Parenting, amateur parenting expert James Breakwell will teach you to stop worrying and embrace your child's destiny as devastatingly average. To get there, you'll have to overcome your kid, other parents, and yourself, all of whom will push you to do more than is absolutely necessary. Honestly, by reading this far, you’re already trying too hard. But don't stop now. You're exactly the kind of person who needs this book.

Genres: Parenting, Humor, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Family, Comedy, Adult

5 pages, Audiobook

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

James Breakwell is a professional comedy writer and amateur father of four girls, ages eight and under. He is best known for his family humor Twitter account @XplodingUnicorn, which boasts more than a million followers. The account went viral In April 2016 and transformed James from a niche comedy writer into one of the most popular dad brands on social media.

Since becoming internet famous, James has been profiled by USA Today, US Weekly, The Daily Mail, Metro, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Better Homes and Gardens, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Upworthy, The Chive, Bored Panda, 9gag, College Humor, various ABC and Fox TV news affiliates, and countless other TV, radio, and internet outlets. Pictures of his smiling girls have been displayed in newspapers as far away as India. His articles have appeared in Reader’s Digest, The Federalist, and AskMen. He writes a bi-monthly newspaper column for the IndyStar and has been a guest multiple times on HLN’s The Daily Share.

Closer Magazine named James its 2016 Blogger Dad of the Year. In 2017, he was a finalist for a Shorty Award in the parenting category.

James writes more than just family jokes. His Star Wars parody account @VeryLonelyLuke went viral in December 2015 and now has nearly 350,000 followers. Combined with James’ verified Facebook page, Instagram account, and other various comedy Twitter accounts, James has a total reach of more than 1.5 million followers. He also also reaches thousands of daily readers through his three webcomics, Unbelievably Bad, Unfridgeworthy, and Wombat Dojo.

James’ debut book, Only Dead on the Inside: A Parent’s Guide for Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse, released in October 2017. The parenting book/zombie survival guide mashup is currently available in U.S. and UK markets and is slated to be translated into French and Korean. His second book, Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child, is scheduled for release November 6, 2018.

James is represented by Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. He is open to advertising and writing inquiries.

Reviews

[Kristan Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, parents! Read this book and free yourself from the blood sport that parenting has become! With humor, insight and honesty, smart-ass James Breakwell tells you what no other parenting book has the guts to say — relax. You and the kids will be just fine.

[Jaime K · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Becoming a grown-up is the second-most expensive mistake you’ll ever make. The first is having a kid.” - chapter 5

If you follow James Breakwell on social media, then you know his sense of humor.
If not, then you’re in for a hilarious ride.

While I have the physical book, I read this in Breakwell’s voice. It reads as he talks, as he tweets, as he posts. There are many, many hilarious moments, broken with some serious and legitimate points. This “unbook” to parenting is a must-have for anyone with any number of children.

Or, in my case, someone who teaches them. And as a non-parent teacher, I whole-heartedly approve of the overall message for parents to sometimes just CHILL BACK. Do not be an overbearing, overachieving (albeit, not an UNDERachieving either) parent.
Have a drink. Have a laugh.

Take a step back and look at the big picture.

Breakwell reminds us that there is no perfect time to have a child. And there is no perfect way of parenting. After all, none of them will be “the Chosen One,” and everyone ends up the same (in a way), anyway. You don’t know which adults were natural births or C-sections; who was or was not breastfed; who co-slept and who didn’t.

His Christianity is evident to someone who knows what to look for. After all, Breakwell talks about the pros and cons of having a child at various times of one’s life, from being a teen to being erm… “old as hell” (aka, over 50).

His geekery/pop culture knowledge is evident in how he talks about ‘Star Wars,’ Middle Earth, Cthulhu, and video games.

I cried from laughing so hard.
I have so many things quoted that I might as well retype the book as one stupendous quote.
Chapter 3 was utterly hilarious from the first sentence.

Provided your child doesn’t blame you for all that goes wrong in their life, you have a good future in store for you.

The more money you have, the more complaints you have.
The more money you have, the more you’ll spend on “better” baby items.
Welcome to the monetarily poorest days of life.

I love that he describes pros and cons of many things, from having more than one child (entertainment and saving money on hand-me-downs), to taking pictures (they have to know they were loved), to education, to food choices.
With education, there is an absolutely great reminder that stats are ‘averages,’ and any individual child should not be measured against those stats. Focus on your own kid. Plus, a lot of the stats are steeped in money, and a knowledge base is contributed to by many other factors.

[Becca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was trying way too hard to be funny and did not succeed. I laughed 0 times.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely

As a preggo woman expecting her first child soon, this was a book of fresh air. So many people offer loving advice and this book reassures the nervous mother that there is no “right” way. Just keep the child alive with the least effort possible. Win.

[Anneke Koning · Rating 2 out of 5]

Het voldeed qua humor niet zo aan mijn verwachtingen.

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it and was disappointed :( was very short, most of the jokes fell flat for me, and I was hoping for a bit more tongue in cheek wisdom but it was mostly just heavy on the jokes, light on the wisdom. Which would have been fine if I had laughed a lot but I didn't :( sorry to be a downer.

[Jeneece Western · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to love it because his twitter feed is stupendous. The graphs and ideas were funny but felt drawn out a bit. I think he does better with the short stabs of reality that are really funny.

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hilarious! Really good counterbalance for when you get overwhelmed by all the stuff out there pressuring you to be some kind of superparent who does all the things and in turns pressures their kid(s) to be high achievers. James Breakwell reminds us that most kids will be average, and your goals should be to turn them into self-sufficient adults who are not social deviants and don't blame you for everything. I like it.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is hilarious, and Breakwell is spot on with some of his parenting insights. He has a way of putting things that’s incredibly dry at times, but no less hilarious. This might’ve been a better print book than audiobook, however, as the author himself narrates it, and I don’t think he really read it in a way that did the humor justice. A little rushed, and with little inflection to emphasize a funny bit or make it stand out from the rest. It felt like he was reading rather than performing, and narrators who feel like they’re reading make it hard to get caught up in the book. Still well worth a read, and I definitely recommend.

[Tia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just this side of too ridiculous to read!

[Angela Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is funny. This book is true. This book sums up my parenting skills to a T.

[Anna Greene-Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laughed All The Way Through

I loved this book. I'm done raising children, but it was funny the whole way through. His simple style of writing and his quirky way of looking at and comparing things just speaks to my funny side. It was a much needed silly break in my book list.

[Dawn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dnf

[Felicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

If happiness is your only goal for your kid, you might as well buy them heroin.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really really funny at times.
Really really boring other times.

The fun makes up for the lengthiness, so: Overall good impression.

[Borja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had a lot of fun reading this book.
Highlighted many good thoughts and can’t wait to try the philosophy

[Stéfanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was over the moon when Sinterklaas (the Catholic Saint whose birthday is celebrated as a big feast in the Netherlands) got me the newest book from James Breakwell. As his bio states he is a professional comedy writer and an amateur father of four. My deepest respect for him and Lola for raising four daughters, I have my plate full with two children 😊.

Since I actually have a PhD (the title for Breakwell is striped through on the book), although not in child studies but in Sociology, I feel I am pretty qualified to review and rate this book. Breakwell has three premises we should all strive for in raising our kids:
- Make sure they can support themselves
- Make sure they are not total social deviants
- Make sure they will not blame you for how they turn out

In nineteen, quite hilarious, chapters he shows the reader how to achieve these three milestones of parenting with the least amount of effort possible. Which is not the same as doing completely nothing, because doing nothing can cause a lot of work in the long run. He takes us through the major parenting issues we know from real parenting books: food, clothing, taking pictures and school.

Being completely pretensionless and quite funny he shows the reader how not to quite ruin your child. This is the ultimate book for first-time parents who are afraid they will do everything wrong. There is not so much we can do wrong and for all the overachieving parents in the world, their children will turn out just as ordinary as most of us.

Interested in the book? Buy and read it. In need of more (parenting) fun? Follow Breakwell on his twitter-account @XplodingUnicorn. He makes my day at least once a week. As for rating the book: Breakwell deserves four stars. The book is funny and it’s main message is important: loosen up and enjoy life.

[Mykhailo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the book, its style and humor but I would not take it seriously as a guide. This book, as many other life guides written in English, represents a point of view of a guy living in a bubble of western middle class society and, obviously, is not applicable worldwide. The guy assumes that a life of an average middle class representative is pretty good so why to wish more for your children. He is not aware that there are many countries where being "average" means to suffer whole your life lacking good food, accommodation, simple pleasures of life like travelling and, at the same time, working hard for nothing. In such circumstances, parents naturally tend to force their children to learn several languages, drill sciences, compete in music or sport in order to give them a chance to escape and live abroad, for instance in the state where the author is from. In such country those children will not posses a luxury to live a wealthy life being average. They just have to over-compete locals to survive and get citizenship. Often, people who have succeeded in that had usually grown as social deviants in their home countries. This is simply because "being social" is a relative notion and depends on society. I am pretty sure that a guy considered being social in US would be a social deviant in former USSR and wise versa. So maybe it isn't that bad when your kid are not able to socialize in a totalitarian society.

[Sonia189 · Rating 2 out of 5]

É certo que a escrita não é má e percebo que tenha a sua graça...embora eu não tenha rido em momento algum.
Acho que fui um pouco influenciada com a frase "o pai mais divertido do twitter" que está na capa mas se não fosse um livro que trouxe da biblioteca por empréstimo, se calhar não pensaria muito nele.

Na verdade, eu nunca tinha ouvido falar no autor, nem tenho twitter mas pensei que este fosse um daqueles livros em que o autor, neste caso no papel de pai, fosse dar conselhos sobre como ser pai, pois claro, mas num tom engraçado mesmo no meio de assuntos mais sérios. Pensei também que fosse incluir exemplos das suas próprias opções e da sua experiência com as filhas mas não aconteceu.

Enfim, percebo a ideia mas não achei grande piada à forma como a mensagem foi passada.

[Maggie Athridge]

This book was awful. I was hoping it would be funny but it just smacks of male privilege and selfishness. Most of his suggestion for minimizing your parenting effort would put the work on someone else - don't take your kids to sports practice (someone is going to have to) he appears to be glorifying the idea of shoving off your responsibilities as a parent onto other parents in his circle and probably on his partner. I'm all for not being a helicopter parent but this book was just ridiculous. And on top of that his jokes weren't even that funny.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts out great! Hilarious and insightful. Unfortunately it goes downhill by the midpoint and ridiculous toward the end. James weekly newsletters are great because they are short and funny and next week they feel fresh again. But getting pounded by his humour page after page becomes tedious.

[Nicola Hebron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as funny as twitter

I bought this book because I find James breakwell’s twitter and weekly emails funny. I was disappointed in this book because whilst mildly amusing, it was nowhere near as funny as I expected it to be.

[aCupcakeBlonde · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kinda expected this to be a lot more funny than it was. Breakwell's other writings make me laugh out loud. But this only brought about a slight chuckle here and there. Still, entertaining, just not a funny as I expected. He always has an interesting way of looking at things.

[Cosette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty silly.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say, one of my favorite parts of the book is when he thanks his kids for not dying, because that would have made him seem like a horrible person to be giving advice on parenting.

James Breakwell is one of those people that will automatically get me to buy a book. I don't even care what the subject is, if his name is on it as the author, I'm buying it.

With this book, while it is hilarious, it also has some valid points. I've always wondered about the people I hear about that put their unborn babies on waiting lists for preschools. It seems a little extreme and in the long run doesn't actually seem to get the kid any farther in life than if they went to *gasp* public school. In fact, in the past few years, there have been a few times where teens have been in trouble and have blamed it on affluenza and having been given way too much as a child. On the other hand, there have been teens in the news that come from poor neighborhoods and schools that have been accepted into amazing colleges with millions of dollars worth of scholarships. Sometimes less is actually more when raising kids.

I feel like this book is more enjoyable in its actual book form, not audio book or maybe even ebook. I don't know how it looks as an ebook, so I can't say for sure on that one. Just the design of the chapters where words are crossed out and replaced with new ones and the tables and charts make me wonder how much of that comes across when you are just listening. Who knows, maybe I'm just a visual person and like to see it in front of me. If paper books are not your thing, then go with one of the other formats, there is no doubt that the humor of the book does not diminish because of the format.

I would recommend this book to all adults, whether they have kids or not. I don't have any, but still found it a delightful read.

Author: James Breakwell
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Publication Date: November 1st 2018

[E. C. Koch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having a kid is horrible and ruins your life and Breakwell knows it. He also knows that a lot of what makes it horrible is other parents, parents who have made parenting a professional occupation and who have made their kids avatars of their own (i.e., the parents') desires and wishes and dreams. Breakwell calls these "overachieving" parents, and his premise is simple: the children of overachieving parents turn out exactly the same as those of bare minimum parents. His argument: don't try so hard. So, okay, this is a humor book, so while it's broken into chapters about parenting topics, Breakwell's intent is to parody the parenting book genre and gently rib those overachievers who are the object of his wit. Woven throughout these easy pages is, actually, quite a lot of good advice about how to raise a kid, which, if it sounds counterintuitive, only does so because the overachieving paradigm has become normative. It's also really funny. But because it's trying to be funny, and because each paragraph is a constructed to set up an inevitable punchline, a narcotizingly predictable pattern emerges that serves to dampen one's critical faculties to the point where I registered what was written as funny but no longer laughed (and lost the advice hidden in the jokes). After the whole everything though, this was a fun, quick read that makes the daunting task of being a parent seem a little less so if only because Breakwell himself has done it before.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love James Breakwell. In a lot of ways he reminds me of an even more snarky, cynical, millennial Dave Barry. If you've ever read Breakwell's newsletter and you enjoy it, you will like the book. And if you haven't read his newsletter on Substack - you should be. I don't even have kids & his stories keep me fully engaged.

This book is a surprisingly sly satire of the whole 'Tiger Mom' approach to parenting. I laughed out loud multiple times. He hits on all the big parenting controversies (daycare vs stay at home parents, overscheduled kids, etc).

What I like about Breakwell's newsletters is that he starts at Point A, takes you on a journey that has a few tangents, and then pulls it together in the end so that the conclusion clearly ties back to the beginning. He achieves this here, overall, too. The first half of the book I sensed Breakwell wasn't quite finding his groove, so it was a bit repetitive. About half way through the book he really starts to find it and it's fantastic.

[Merkathi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! Just brilliant!

I'll admit I don't read parenting books normally - I've tried a few but I just end up zoning out and losing interest. But in this case, I read the entire thing cover to cover in just a matter of hours. It helps that it is not a particularly long or complicated book but it is also hilarious and so completely and utterly relatable.

I tire of the endless parent shaming that is everywhere these days and I tire of my own mommy guilt that I am not doing enough or the right things at the right times. I think every parent who has ever stressed about being a good parent should read this book. And then re-read it every time they have to listen to someone bragging about how their kid just loves to eat organic, gluten-free, kale sticks or how they took their baby for a 'soul reading' so they would know more about their child and how to parent specifically for his personality. Good god, enough is enough...

[Vero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a funny read with a kernel of truth.
I liked the twitter account and therefore bought this book. Also because I do believe that the more moderate approach with children is good - not trying to raise a nobel price winner but a decent human being.

BUT.

He truly lost me in the chapter about having more than one child. It was simply put stupid. I have one child, my sister three. The theory that more children are not multiplied the work, e.g. because they "play with each other" is one that might work in his family. It is not a universal rule. More than one child will involve a lot of logistics, the cost for child care are the same for each child, at least in my country, there is no discount for siblings... and so on and forth.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Exhausting to read. I got 3/4 of the way through and had to give up
It's a shame because I've always liked his tweets, this however tried way to hard to be funny and instead fell flat on its boring face. I wouldn't mind but the advice was also non-existant. Not to mention the chapter where he justifies not having an only child because they will be weird and multiple kids isn't harder than 1, Bruh, come on, 4 kids isn't harder than having 1? For somebody who apparently doesn't care about others opinions you sure are judgemental of people who don't want more than 1 kid.
Started skipping the lame charts 4 chapters in which improved the experience slightly