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What is more difficult: to get your kids to eat a balanced diet, or to develop in them a healthy relationship with food for years to come? This week’s featured review by Gretchen Ronnevik covers a new book that attempts to do both. She also looks at a 2016 book on homemaking that’s become surprisingly timely given conversations about the “tradwife” movement, and a 1997 book on how to teach kids conflict resolution.
Happy Reading,
Taylor Berglund
Senior Features Editor, Christianity Today
A portion of this newsletter appeared as a column at Christianity Today. Join CT for full access to all our journalism.
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Three Books on Parenting
Jennifer Anderson, Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life (Flatiron Books, 2026)
The process of teaching kids what to eat—and how—can force us to address our own sometimes-dysfunctional relationships with food, diet culture, and bodily autonomy. For example, my husband likes our children to eat all their food on their plates, whereas I don’t mind if they don’t finish. His thoughts come from the fun contests he had growing up where siblings competed to see who could finish their plate most completely. My approach comes from wanting to avoid hours like those I used to spend sitting at the table as a kid, staring at my food with a pained stomach. Many of us have a complicated relationship with food, and it’s important to pass on to our kids a healthy relationship with it.
Swooping in to aid parents in this important work, Feed Them Well is a thorough resource on children’s nutrition and approaches to food culture. Author Jennifer Anderson, a registered dietician, offers a scientific perspective on sensationalized media headlines and helps parents interpret what parenting clickbait might actually be saying. I found her breakdowns to be the most helpful aspect of the book.
Feed Them Well also goes beyond nutritional basics—such as getting kids to eat a colorful array of foods—with instructions on how to help kids healthily manage their bodies and be aware of their hunger and other needs. I loved how realistic Anderson’s recommendations are, focusing on basic principles rather than rigorous, unbending rules. Notably, she has the humility to answer some parenting questions with “I don’t know.” Feed Them Well gives parents the necessary tools to train their kids to both eat well and have a healthy relationship with food as they grow up.
Sally and Sarah Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming (Tyndale Momentum, 2016)
The Lifegiving Home came out nearly a decade before the modern discourse on the tradwife movement, but in the context of that conversation, it’s a strangely timely and thought-provoking text. Written by a mother-daughter duo, The Lifegiving Home focuses less on specific roles than on the holistic function and purpose of the home as a place of creativity and rest. Home is envisioned as a place where families ought to cultivate beauty for its own sake, not for social media c