Love in the Time of Contempt

In Love in the Time of Contempt Joanne Fedler won't tell you how to be the 'perfect' parent. She's not a psychologist or an academic. But she is the mother of two teenagers, and she knows how it feels to be the parent of someone sprouting hair, tits and attitude all over the place.

This is a gritty, hilarious look at the day-to-day interactions with teenagers, and the tussled, frazzled and complex business of remaining mature while supporting someone to become an adult.

Fedler shares her philosophy that we are meant to parent imperfectly – our mistakes are the start of the important conversations we need to have with our kids. She guides us through enduring intermittent bouts of contempt and not taking it personally, picking the fights that are worth having, and surviving the journey from frustration, to confusion, to elation and back again.

Love in the Time of Contempt is a funny, poignant account of the dramas and delights of parenting people who know it all, who don't yet have a fully functioning brain and who desperately need us to parent them – just not in the way we're used to.

'With perhaps the most apt title of any work about teens ever written, this book beautifully elucidates the challenges, heartbreak and hysteria of losing our babies and enduring their awkward metamorphosis to adulthood. I found myself nodding, laughing, wincing, and wondering how the hell Jo smuggled the hidden cameras into my home.' — Kerri Sackville