Bare Minimum Parenting: The Ultimate Guide to Not Quite Ruining Your Child

This isn't a book about overachieving at parenting.

This isn't even a book about achieving exactly the right amount.

This is a book about doing as little as possible without quite ruining your child.

Overachieving parents want you to believe the harder you work, the better your kid will turn out. That lie ends now.

The truth is most kids end up remarkably unremarkable no matter what you do, so you might as well achieve mediocrity by the easiest possible route. The goal of "bare minimum parenting" is to turn your child into a functional adult with only a fraction of the effort spent by super moms and dads.

If you do it right, your kid will be no better or worse off than their kids, but with more free time left for you. That's more valuable than all the participation trophies in the world.

In Bare Minimum Parenting, amateur parenting expert James Breakwell will teach you to stop worrying and embrace your child's destiny as devastatingly average. To get there, you'll have to overcome your kid, other parents, and yourself, all of whom will push you to do more than is absolutely necessary. Honestly, by reading this far, you're already trying too hard. But don't stop now. You're exactly the kind of person who needs this book.

James Breakwell is a professional comedy writer and amateur father of four girls ages 7 and under. His Twitter account @XplodingUnicorn has more than 640,000 followers who check in with him daily as he fails as a parent and a human being.

Breakwell's comedy went viral in April 2016 when Buzzfeed featured his kid-centric jokes in an article that quickly drew more than 2 million views. His @XplodingUnicorn account grew by more than 400,000 followers in the following months. His jokes have been featured by USA Today, US Magazine, DailyMail.com, Metro.co.uk, Huffington Post, 9GAG, theCHIVE.com, CollegeHumor.com, various ABC and Fox TV news affiliates, and countless other TV, radio, and Internet outlets.

His articles have appeared in Reader's Digest, The Federalist, and AskMen. He has been a guest multiple times on HLN's The Daily Share, and they haven't banned him yet. He can open most jars on the first try and is only a little afraid of the dark. He still can't load the dishwasher right.