‘It was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me, having children. The children’s demands on me were things that nobody else ever asked me to do.’ Toni Morrison

Children are a wonder, a blessing, a miracle, and everyone has an opinion on how we should raise them. From novelists to paediatricians; from modern parenting ‘experts’ to child psychologists; from debunked academics to 1950s ‘agony aunts’, Tiny Feet is the first anthology of its kind, showcasing a range of the most influential writing about children over the past three-hundred years. Published chronologically, the extracts featured in this delightful compendium show the extent to which some of our attitudes have changed while others remain absolute, and remind us of the joy that children have always brought to our lives.

Contributors include: Bruno Bettelheim on the value of fairy tales; Erik H. Erikson on the meaning of play; Marvin J. Gersh on how to raise children in your ‘spare time’; Good Housekeeping (1913) on how to have ‘better babies’; Naomi Stadlen on how parenting books undermine parenting by reducing it to a number of essential tasks; Donald Winnicott on ‘the good-enough mother’.

Plus: memoir, fiction and further opinion from Daniel Burgess, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Isabella Beeton, Charles Darwin, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Sully, Maria Montessori, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Mead, Jean Piaget, Harry F. Harlow, Benjamin Spock, Marvin J. Gersh, Toni Morrison, Nancy Samalin, Anne Lamott, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, Alison Gopnik, Giuseppina Persico, Cleon C. Mason, Bernardine Evaristo, Ella Cara Deloria, John B. Watson and Rosalie Watson.