Parents and practitioners caring for parents are always looking for ways to foster deeper connections between parents and their children and teens, and to help parents and kids navigate societal stress and strain.

Our favorite parenting books of 2024 provide parents and people who support parents with scientific insights and guidance on how to cultivate children’s thriving across early childhood through adolescence. They range in focus from how to view adolescence as a period of promise, to how to nurture resilience in Black kids, to how to counteract harmful pressure on boys. Our selected books also cover important parenting topics like understanding children’s temperament, motivating young people, and fostering a secure attachment—the loving parent-child bond. All these books underscore the ways children’s individual well-being is intertwined with community well-being. 

How is it that adolescence continues to have a bad rap despite decades of developmental science telling us otherwise? The Breakthrough Years author Ellen Galinsky, president and cofounder of the Families and Work Institute, included over a thousand adolescents (nine to 19 years old) and their parents in her research for the book, which began in 2015. One of the questions she asked these young people was: “What would you like to tell the adults of America about people your age?”—and they had five main answers.

• Understand adolescent development rather than viewing it in a negative light. Research suggests that parents who use positive words to describe the teen brain have teens who tend to have greater well-being.
• Listen and talk with them, not at them. She provides practical tips for parents, like listening more than talking and taking their perspective—a “when I was a child” rather than a “now that I’m an adult” mindset.
• Don’t stereotype them. Age discrimination and focusing on what is statistically “normal” rather than the variations that are possible among individual kids is harmful for adolescent development.
• Know that adolescents are trying to understand themselves and their needs. Important needs in adolescence are a sense of belonging, support, autonomy, respect, challenge, competence, identity, self-exploration, purpose, and a way to contribute.
• Know that they are drawn to learning. For example, young people are learning about goal-setting, perspective taking, communicating, collaborating, problem solving, and taking on challenges.

“The Breakthrough Years is not a typical book about adolescents because it’s not a bad-news book, but it’s not a good-news book, either,” writes Galinsky. “Because I am a parent and grandparent . . . I’ve written it as a real-news book—with news you can use.”

The Breakthrough Years is like a mic drop that provides a thoroughly researched argument for a rebrand of this amazing time in the lifespan. It sheds light on adolescent experiences that transform the doom-and-gloom “Just wait until…” warning that parents hear into a promise for something imminently wondrous.

Raising Resilient Black Kids is a workbook that guides parents to explore how best to answer questions like “When should I talk with my child about race?,” What information should I bring up?,” and “How can I help my child cope when they see racism?” Written by Erlanger Turner, a psychologist, researcher, and founder of Therapy for Black Kids, it begins with research on the impact of racism on children’s well-being. Turner explains that racial stress is systematically embedded and pervasive in the everyday lives of Black children and teens, from racial discrimination in schools to racialized community violence and police brutality. He describes multiple ways racial stress can affect kids: emotionally, behaviorally, cognitively, and socially.

Raising Resilient Black Kids highlights the importance of parents tending to their own well-being because, of course, racism can affect their Mental health, too. Turner provides Coping strategies for parents based on cognitive-behavioral therapy, like becoming aware of your triggers, observing your thought patterns, noticing your emotions, and trying out strategies in advance to cope with racial stress, such as deep breathing.

Turner explains three ways to increase Black children’s resilience. First, he provides guidance to parents on racial socialization, which involves families communicating about race, interacting with people from different races to prepare kids for bias and discrimination, and instilling pride in their racial identity and culture. Next, he describes how parents can nurture children’s activism to foster their sense of agency and empowerment. Finally, he shares mindfulness and “soulfulness” strategies to nurture children’s resilience to racial discrimination, like reading spiritual texts, praying, hiking, making art, or listening to uplifting music.

Raising Resilient Black Kids integrates opportunities for parents to reflect on key insights with thought-provoking journal prompts, case studies of real-life parenting scenarios, “Ask Dr. Earl” answers to common parent questions, and easy-to-follow tools and resources. “This book will improve your understanding of the psychology of racism and your ability to help your child navigate racism to reduce difficulties that may shape their social and emotional development,” explains Turner.

If you look at many statistics, men are suffering—especially from loneliness and alienation. As a group, they have fewer friends and sources of intimacy than ever before, and their health and happiness are declining.

Why is this? According to developmental psychologist Niobe Way, the problem lies in how we raise boys in American culture. The expectations we put on them to be stoic and self-reliant are thwarting them from growing into happy, healthy, socially connected men.

Way has been interviewing and studying boys and young men for decades, following their relationship trajectories and well-being over time. In an earlier book, Deep Secrets, she reviewed her research showing that boys express a need for close same-sex confidants and intimate relationships, just as girls do. Yet those friendships often flounder as boys grow older, leading to a crisis of connection.

In Rebels With a Cause, Way examines how society’s beliefs help create this crisis. She uses the term “boy” culture to describe our culturally based, warped sense of what it means to be a “man,” and how we directly and indirectly place more value on “masculine” qualities than “feminine” qualities—e.g., thinking over feeling, stoicism over vulnerability, competition over cooperation.

By giving boys the message that “real men” shouldn’t feel, cooperate, or be vulnerable, we deny them their full humanity, argues Way, making it harder for them to form the healthy, caring relationships they need to be happy.

“If we raise them to go against their nature by not valuing what they want and need, they will struggle . . . and the consequences will likely be dire not only for them but for everyone else as well,” she writes.

Way makes an impassioned plea for us to stop putting these pressures on boys. By listening to the boys themselves, as she has done, we can help them—and us—enjoy fuller lives.

Each child enters the world with their own innate temperament, which includes characteristics like fearfulness, impulsivity, or being easily frustrated. The same parenting approach might yield very different responses from two children in the same family with different temperaments. Liliana Lengua and Maria Gartstein, the clinical psychologist and parent duo behind Parenting With Temperament in Mind, dive deep into the science of temperament to help parents identify and understand their child’s own temperament characteristics and the behaviors associated with them.

Their book illuminates the brain and body systems underlying temperament and helps parents see that children with different temperament characteristics will not only respond differently to the same situation; they will actually experience it differently. From this strong scientific foundation, Lengua and Gartstein lay out four principles of parenting—be present, be warm, be balanced, and be consistent—and how they can be tailored for different temperament characteristics, from fearlessness to inflexibility.

The book illustrates that one size doesn’t fit all. With a fearless child, having a close relationship with a parent who is warm and responsive while setting consistent limits can help protect them from risky choices. An inflexible child, however, might benefit from a parent balancing validation and structure to slowly and gently encourage deviations. Parenting With Temperament in Mind provides readers with clear practices and tools to support them in using these principles, from breathing tools to help them regulate and be present to sample plans and scripts to offer consistent behavioral management. 

The book flows beautifully between explaining the latest science, providing wisdom and anecdotes from Lengua’s and Gartstein’s own parenting experience, and offering practical tips and practices to parents. These resources will help parents with children with challenging temperament characteristics feel both seen and supported.

Lengua and Gartstein leave the reader with a note of encouragement: “Children with temperament characteristics that increase their risk for developing problems can be supported in ways that bring out the best of their qualities and in ways that build their social and emotional competence as well as their joy and well-being.”  

In 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, developmental scientist and author David Yeager explains that our commonly held notions of adolescence and puberty are wrong.

The common view is that young people need wiser adults to tell them what and how to think because they don’t realize the consequences of their impulsive and risky behaviors. But that interpretation is mistaken. Instead, we need to understand their motivations—in particular, how puberty primes young people to gain social status and respect, because evolutionarily it was necessary for survival. Only then can we support them to realize their full potential. “They want the same dignity and respect that we have as adults—and what’s irrational about that?” asks Yeager.

Adolescents find themselves in a dilemma: trying to fulfill their intrinsic need for status in a society that often diminishes them. The solution? Yeager introduces the “mentor mindset” for parents, teachers, and coaches. This kind of mentorship expects adolescents to strive toward achievable high standards while providing strong support, which offers a genuine path to earning status and respect. Yeager explains that earned prestige is highly motivating, and adolescents naturally work toward sustaining it.

Yeager highlights important keys for the mentor mindset. Mentors are transparent in consistently and clearly communicating their beliefs in adolescents meeting high standards with the right resources. They ask authentic questions, which nurtures understanding and collaboration. They promote a nuanced view of stress—it can be a positive source of energy, challenge, and growth, or it can be threatening and debilitating. They nurture purpose by linking what young people are currently doing to something bigger, which is also personally motivating and meaningful. Finally, mentors acknowledge the importance of belonging and help adolescents find ways to foster it.

Yeager combines research with fascinating stories of the impact of mentor mindsets on young people. He provides scenarios for adults to reflect upon and offers recommendations for how they can put key insights into practice. “All of us—every teacher, parent, manager, or anyone else who interacts with a young person—can become the kind of people we truly aspire to be when our mentoring, both official and unofficial, improves the lives of young people long after they leave our care,” writes Yeager.

It’s estimated that 50% of people had a secure attachment with their parents as children. In Raising Securely Attached Kids, therapist and mom of three Eli Harwood offers hope. “The good news is that no matter what kind of attachment experience we grew up with, whether it was secure, avoidant, resistant, or disorganized, there is solid data that we can put in the work to learn how to be a safe haven and secure base for our children,” she writes. 

This accessible book lays out the latest research on attachment theory, helping parents understand attachment patterns—how a securely attached child is able to “reach and receive” when they are upset, while a child with disorganized attachment might “shut off or blow up.” Harwood illustrates what a secure attachment relationship looks like at each developmental stage, from holding our infants close to being a secure base for our teens.

With a vulnerable and compassionate tone, she lays out how connection is the foundation for parenting and how meeting children’s need for connection can encourage cooperation. For example, “calm problem solving and compassion” are tools that can help us foster cooperation, whether it’s avoiding battles when it’s time to brush teeth to dealing with teen individuation. Ultimately, this helps children grow up to be confident, empathic, and resilient.
 
Harwood extends parents grace, acknowledging the realities of real-world parenting and offering tools to heal generational attachment patterns. The book weaves clear research summaries, stories from her own parenting experience, practical tips and developmentally appropriate scripts, and wisdom from parents and parenting practitioners together into an approachable and loving resource for parents.

She ends the book with a touching set of wishes for parents’ relationship with their children, which begins, “May your children know that your arms are a safe haven for their tender needs and distressing moments.”