Our Favorite Parenting Books of 2025

Parents and people who support parents and families recognize that while parenting has its highs, stress among parents is also ubiquitous. They are seeking ideas and tips to help parents navigate the lows, and strategies for nurturing their well-being. Our favorite parenting books of 2025 provide scientific insights to support the resilience and flourishing of children, teens, and parents. They cover a variety of topics, including coping with racial and cultural stress for teens and young adults of color, having conversations with tween and teen boys, and effecting change for families of children experiencing medical complexity or disability.

Our book selections also cover important topics like helping parents to navigate their own emotions, and the power of awe and play for children. Most of these books weave together cutting-edge research and powerful personal stories that can help readers make positive changes in their day-to-day lives.

Empower Yourself Against Racial and Cultural Stress: Using Skills from the REACH Program to Cope, Heal, and Thrive, by Ryan C.T. DeLapp Empower Yourself Against Racial and Cultural Stress is a workbook intended for teens and young adults of color based on the Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Healing (REACH) program developed by psychologist and author Ryan C.T.

DeLapp. “If you identify as a person of color, this book can help you learn to cope with moments of feeling judged unfairly, mistreated, or denied opportunities based on your racial and cultural background,” writes DeLapp.

The workbook helps readers learn to practice empowered coping, which has three steps: Clarify the impacts of cultural stress. Notice uncomfortable emotions, like a lack of control over a situation, and navigate critical thoughts about your race or culture. Think of what you can do. Identify what is still under your control that can help you cope when you’re faced with cultural stress.

Make empowered coping decisions. Discover what is best for you in a particular moment and in the future. The workbook begins with activities to explore your identities, reflect on your experiences with cultural stress, and recognize its impact. It then helps you identify and navigate emotional aspects of cultural stress with strategies like mindfulness and self-compassion.

DeLapp provides guidance to boost your sense of agency and control by making change efforts and making resilience efforts. Finally, he addresses identity stress, which involves experiencing negative cultural feedback. He provides activities for identity exploration, identity expression, and identity protection to nurture self-love, self-confidence, and cultural pride.

Throughout the workbook, DeLapp weaves in the experiences of three fictional characters for readers to learn lessons from. These “empowered navigators” are an 18-year-old Latino man who lives with his family, a 16-year-old Muslim teen who recently immigrated with her family, and a 23-year-old Black man raised in the American South in a very religious family.

DeLapp also encourages readers to identify people in their own community who can be their own empowered navigators. This practical and interactive workbook can be an empowering gift for parents to share with their teens and young adults of color to nurture their resilience and flourishing.

Talk to Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men, by Joanna Schroeder and Christopher Pepper Boys are increasingly struggling and feeling disconnected. “They are underperforming in school and opting out of college, overdosing on drugs, falling under the spell of extremism, and engaging in lethal violence and self-harm—including mass shootings and suicide,” write coauthors Joanna Schroeder and Christopher Pepper.

They wrote Talk to Your Boys as a guide for parents, caregivers, educators, and mentors to catalyze a change, because the way we’re supporting tween and teen boys isn’t working well for them or society at large. Talk to Your Boys puts a spotlight on the power of deep conversations to help boys feel greater connection and practice empathy, compassion, and introspection.

Schroeder and Pepper advise parents to embrace the awkwardness and accept imperfection when talking to boys. They provide conversation strategies and practical tips for parents to begin having conversations about 16 essential topics, including masculinity, emotions, dating, sex, pornography, substance use, screen time, bullying, violence, and racism.

They recommend parents start with having conversations with boys about communication because it is the foundation for all conversations. Here are their six key tips for conversations:Don’t interrupt, inquire. Invite boys respectfully to have a conversation. Set the tone.

Help boys know in advance what the conversation will be about so they can better handle what’s coming. Take them seriously. Show them that you are actively listening for understanding and eager to have a two-way conversation. Get curious, not furious.

Investigate what is getting in the way and seek collaborative solutions rather than getting stuck in disappointment or frustration. Try reflective listening. Pause before responding and paraphrase what you’ve heard to check in about whether your understanding is correct. Talk shoulder to shoulder, not eye to eye.

Consider having a conversation while moving together, like playing ping-pong rather than just staring at each other. With a mix of practical guidance from experts on each topic and authentic and insightful voices from a panel of 85 boys, Talk to Your Boys will resonate with parents who are looking for ways to nurture the well-being of boys who will be guided by standing up for what’s right and creating a better world for all of us.

Be Unapologetically Impatient: The Mindset Required to Change the Way We Do Things, by Christina Cipriano Be Unapologetically Impatient integrates psychologist and author Christina Cipriano’s insights as a scholar as well as her journey as a mother of four children with a vantage point on medical complexity and neurodivergence. She calls for putting joy in the foreground while working to promote justice in the face of discrimination or inequity based on disability, language, income, culture, education, and more.

While being mindful of toxic positivity, she challenges reflexive deficit-framing that focuses on what is lacking or wrong rather than valuing different experiences and ways of being to catalyze changes that can improve inadequate systems and people’s lives. Cipriano spotlights the frustrating obstacles to accessing support for families of children with disabilities, like the refrain of “That’s just the way we do things here,” policies that normalize waiting for children to fail before providing interventions, and the expectation for families to remain patient while waiting for services.

She shares personal stories of how she has taken action when encountering challenges around accessibility, such as by asking questions and communicating with organizational leaders, that can serve as models for addressing flaws in the systems readers are encountering. The book provides concrete suggestions to work to change injustices using “call-ins” rather than “callouts,” the latter of which are often counterproductive in the long term.

Cipriano offers five helpful call-in strategies:Strive to ask questions with the intention of hearing the answers. Acknowledge and navigate the intense emotions you’re experiencing about the injustice before you while focusing your questions on the present circumstances, like a barrier or a policy, rather than on a person.

Avoid asking why, how, or how could you… do, say, behave, inhibit…. Ask questions about the system, like “Why does the policy discriminate?” or “Why does the device take eight months to be manufactured?” Remind yourself to stay in a curious, nonjudgmental, nonargumentative tone.

Be mindful of your emotional experiences and expressions, and when your volume is loud. Focus on the issue and share facts and suggestions for actively addressing the situation. Avoid shoulding people. Be aware that people are not receptive to hearing others’ unsolicited suggestions for what they should have done in a past situation.

Avoid asking people if they can do something. Understand that “Can you…” often leads to a defensive response and less openness to a conversation. Parents will appreciate the empowering message and practical guidance of Be Unapologetically Impatient. “I am not waiting for justice at the expense of my children,” writes Cipriano.

“And you don’t need to, either. It’s time to be unapologetically impatient. Let me show you how.” Raising Awe Seekers: How the Science of Wonder Helps Our Kids Thrive, by Deborah Farmer Kris “When we seek out awe with our children, and give them a name for the feeling, we help bend their worlds towards wonder.” In Raising Awe Seekers, child development expert Deborah Farmer Kris unpacks a trove of research on awe, explaining the benefits of awe for families and providing parents with practical and accessible ideas for raising children who turn toward wonder.

The book positions awe as an antidote to the busyness, scariness, and messiness of modern parenting and a powerful tool for helping both parents and children to slow down and connect. Each chapter unpacks the research on a different source of awe, from nature to music to big questions to human kindness. Drawing on interviews with experts in the field, Kris makes the case for why awe-seeking is such a powerful tool—highlighting its ability to reduce cortisol, foster generosity, and strengthen resilience.

She then applies the research on the benefits of awe to parenting, providing concrete tips to bring each source of awe into your child’s life, complete with recommendations for awe-inspiring picture books. In the chapter on the wonder of nature, we learn from research that time outdoors experiencing awe can serve as a protective measure and can recharge our attention battery, and Kris suggests an “oh look!” walk or moon-watching with your child.

Kris highlights throughout the book that the first step to bringing more awe into our children’s lives is to become awe-seekers ourselves. Cultivating this way of being for parents supports our own well-being and deepens our relationship with our children. What’s more, awe-seeking parents can help slow down their kids’ childhood, making space for wonder and helping them gain lifelong skills in connection, curiosity, and humility.

The Way of Play: Using Little Moments of Big Connection to Raise Calm and Confident Kids, by Tina Payne Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent For many parents, playing with their children just isn’t intuitive. We might assume that we remember how to play like children do, but our brains don’t work that way anymore. Often there is relearning that needs to be done in order to join our kids in the power of play. In their book, The Way of Play, pediatric therapists and play experts Tina Payne Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent share seven strategies for parents to use play as a tool to support their children’s emotional development and resilience and build a stronger connection with their children.

For example, one play strategy is to watch for ways to mirror your child’s actions—with your body, your face, or your voice. When children experience this strategy, they receive the message from their parents, “Someone tunes into me, I can tune into others.” Using mirroring in play can help your child build deeper skills to understand their own emotions, supporting their connections with and empathy for others.

But how does this happen? The Way of Play breaks down what happens in your child’s brain when you mirror them and also teaches parents how to mirror. The book is full of stories from Wisen-Vincent’s practice at the Play Strong Institute that show these strategies in action. It also includes copious cartoon-style graphics illustrating and providing scripts to help parents practice each play strategy with their child.

Bryson and Wisen-Vincent leave us with the reminder that “Play is kids’ primary language, and it’s key to helping them build emotional, cognitive, and relational skills. And most importantly, it’s a way you can build a stronger relationship with them that will reward you both for years to come.” Parents Have Feelings, Too: A Guide to Navigating Your Emotions So You And Your Family Can Thrive, by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga Parents Have Feelings, Too acknowledges that just as our children have intense emotions, so do parents, but many of us were never taught in school or at home how to navigate these big feelings.

“This book teaches you how to identify, name, validate, and work through your emotions,” write coauthors and psychotherapists Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga. “It’s a skill set that nourishes lifelong well-being and robust mental health for you and your children. The book is divided into three parts. It begins with describing the central role of emotions for a sense of connection and well-being.

Hendel and Fraga explain how our emotions are related to our attachment style—secure, avoidant, anxious, or fearful—and its role in the ways we approach parenting our children. They clarify what emotions are and dispel myths like pushing down emotions makes them go away and has no consequences.” They introduce the Change Triangle, which is a tool to help you skillfully and confidently navigate your emotions toward calm, connection, curiosity, and compassion, which are keys to achieving a state of open-heartedness and authenticity.

The three corners of the Change Triangle tool are:Defense. The various things we do to avoid emotional distress or pain. Inhibitory emotions. Feelings like anxiety, guilt, and shame, which help us follow the rules of society and culture.

Core emotions. Feelings like anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy, and excitement that are key to survival and help us to express our needs, wants, likes, and dislikes.

The fourth component of the Change Triangle is the open-hearted state of the authentic self—when our nervous system is regulated and can help us to take actions that are constructive and promote our well-being. Parents Have Feelings, Too walks readers through how to use the Change Triangle tool and offers plenty of examples of its application across a variety of both inhibitory and core emotions.

Importantly, Hendel and Fraga provide a balanced view of emotions as information and sources of insight that can serve a purpose in our lives. For example, they describe how guilt can prevent us from being dishonest or breaking the law but, when it’s experienced disproportionately, can lead us to harsh self-judgment.

Readers will appreciate the dozens of practical exercises woven throughout the book, like “Dropping Into the Body,” “Tending to Your Sadness,” and “Working With Disgust Caused by Your Child.” “These tools have been game-changing for us as parents and psychotherapists, and we are excited to share them with you,” write Hendel and Fraga. ## NOTABLE

MENTION: We also want to share our own workbook that came out this year, Family Well-Being for the Greater Good: A science-based workbook for people supporting parents.

It offers parenting practitioners practical lessons and activities to help you prioritize cultivating your social and emotional well-being while additionally supporting you in sharing these insights and practices with the parents and families you serve. Download it for free.