review by Kalynne Pudner

Janet Evanovich calls Jenna McCarthy’s The Parent Trip: From High Heels and Parties to High Chairs and Potties “clever and irreverent.” Evanovich speaks truly.

McCarthy is one funny, edgy gal; I spent some time perusing her website (www.jennamccarthy.com) to see if the clever irreverence of The Parent Trip is endemic to the author or just the product of pregnancy/first-year sleep deprivation. It’s her, alright. Check out the bio on the website, and see if you can’t imagine this 20-something Floridian showing up to a big-time NYC magazine editorial office wearing all white…then trading it in for bikinis and pajamas, in succession, on the California coast. Go on: tell me she doesn’t sound like the first person you’d call for one of those crazy girls’ nights out. If I’m ever in Santa Barbara, I might just do it.

That being said, and said sincerely, I’m not convinced such edginess translates smoothly to a book for new or expectant moms. In no way am I denying that edgy humor is appropriate to motherhood — I’d never have survived almost 20 years and nine incarnations of the state without it, believe me! But not until Chapter 6 does The Parent Trip arrive at motherhood. Before this, it’s about — not “high heels and parties,” as the subtitle might suggest — Jenna’s sex life. (See? I told you she’d be good on a girls’ night out.)

Once I got my 40-ish sensibilities past the “unvarnished” (in the words of one reviewer) descriptions of teenaged Jenna’s desperate machinations for avoiding pregnancy and later just-as-desperate machinations for achieving it — and what I personally found to be an extremely off-putting remark, “unless you are one of the three virgin brides to tie the knot every year” — I was not only entertained, but instructed. Specifically, I was instructed as to how little the business of new motherhood has changed in 20 years.

The new mom’s hospital status still shifts precipitously downward once the baby arrives; there are still a gazillion more baby items available for sale than you could ever figure out how to use, much less need; breast pumps still hurt; moms still vie for one-upmanship; maternity pants still resist being packed away postpartum. (Even though I didn’t particularly care for the, er, unvarnished prose in the section entitled, “‘Take Me Now, Big Guy’ and Other Things You Won’t Be Saying Anytime Soon,” the point still stands. I remember the topic coming up in a postpartum exercise class with my first, and a veteran mom of two saying, “Sex or sleep? Sleep or sex? Hmm, let me think about that a minute. Zzzzzzzz [feigned snoring].”)

And although McCarthy makes full disclaimer that the book is meant to entertain, and not educate, many of her “Trip Tips” are actually quite good. For example, she strongly suggests new parents avail themselves of gift registries to avoid having to dedicate an entire closet to receiving blankets; to choose which of the aforementioned gazillion items are most useful, compare the online registries of several random other expectant couples. My first reaction to this tip was, “Good Lord! Who has the time to google a dozen baby gift registries?” Then it occurred to me: when I was pregnant the first time around, I did. I had all the time in the world! This would have been an excellent use of it (had we known Google in 1989, that is). Another well-advised tip is to figure how many diapers you think you’ll need for a road trip, then triple it. And then distribute them among all the carriers and bags and pockets available.

So do I recommend The Parent Trip? With reservations. It’s funny, it’s clever and it is most certainly irreverent. But for the average new mom, or new hopeful mom, I suspect its bite would be worse than its bark, so to speak: the content is a good bit edgier than the cover copy portends. This may be because some things really aren’t good candidates for humor until you’ve “been there, done that’ — the humor is in the recognition that, as McCarthy proclaims, “you are not alone.” I found myself thinking through all the young women I know who are expecting, or plan to be in the foreseeable future, and not one struck me as someone to whom I’d feel comfortable giving this book.

But that may be just me, and my milieu. Undoubtedly there are readers who don’t flinch at, and are in fact entertained by, “unvarnished” discussion of premarital and marital sex. And I have to admit that among all the grins I gained from previewing The Parent Trip, the biggest one was inspired by discovering in the acknowledgment section (yes, I go back and re-read the beginning after I’ve finished a book; doesn’t everyone?) that McCarthy’s husband’s last name is Coito.

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