Having babies can be stressful, not least because of the conflicting advice about how to bring them up. Gone are the days when Dr Spock or Penelope Leach ruled the shelves. Now books range across a wide spectrum - from the rigid routines of Gina King to the baby-led approach of Jean Liedloff. What is a parent supposed to do?

Reading Christina Hardyment's book Dream Babies would be a good start. In the early 1980s, after having her own four daughters, she wrote a historical account of childcare advice from 1750 onwards. Now a grandmother, she recently updated the book with a brand new chapter looking at and evaluating the latest trends in childcare.

Her book is useful, comforting and fascinating. She has a droll way of putting people's advice into perspective. So, for example, when discussing Jean Liedloff, an anthropologist turned psychologist, whose childcare advice was inspired by living with Yequana Indians, she writes: "Childless baby-care experts who think you can live like an Amazonian Indian in modern Britain need to be treated with caution."

Her spur for writing the first edition, published in 1983, was having her own children. At the time, she was actually writing a book on sewing machines, but she kept wandering to nursery management. Eventually, she realised there was an important story to be told about the advice that people had been offered over the centuries. "I was so fascinated by the idea that all this advice had changed and why it had changed.

"People always loved their children. Some people were strict, some weren't strict - quite like today - and I began to think that actually, these parents feel like us and what made the treatment different were current theories of psychology and religion, medical knowledge and social standing. There is also technology - for example, the invention of prams, something with wheels that you could take baby out in."

She has now updated the book after listening to her daughters and discovering that mothers were, if anything, more worried now. When she was bringing up her daughters in the 1970s, she said people generally just did the same as their parents. "We certainly weren't as full of angst as I feel people are now." She wanted to offer a historic perspective on childcare and babycare advice.

Christina thinks that parents probably do need babycare books, because we are generally so divorced from babies in our lives and they come as a great shock. We also don't have the support we once had. "In the old days you'd have a month lying in, if not a family relation and nurse looking after you. Working-class mothers used to call having babies 'going to Blackpool', because they had such a lot of support. These days, you get booted out of the hospital almost immediately," she said. "You're back at home with all its demands and it's very hard. And a lot is expected from fathers. I do feel for new parents now."

She thinks it is important to treat childcare books with caution, however. "The combination of your inclinations and the advice is very good. So you need to grope about among the babycare experts. Read Dream Babies to find the difference."

The new edition includes Gina Ford, whose ideas on strict routines for babies echo a 1920s baby guru Truby King, and whom mothers either loath or love. "I think she's been vilified too much and a rather exaggerated viewpoint has been taken of her," Christina said. "She did listen to criticism from the first book and the new one is much less rigid, but for a lot of people's lives, what I call 'nudging a baby into a routine' is a very good thing."

Since the first edition of Dream Babies, Christina has written several other non-fiction books, including Heidi's Alp, which tried to find the source of fairy tales, and another on children's author Arthur Ransome. She also reviews books in The Times newspaper. Her next book is about the way kitchens have shaped and been changed by changes in family life in the 20th century. "I chose the kitchen because it's common to everybody's experiences and I think the connections between kitchens and family life are very interesting and illuminating," she said.

Her favourite book is a 1920s one called Common Sense in the Nursery, by Mrs Sydney Frankenburg. "She was an Oxford graduate at Somerville and she wrote it because there weren't any books she thought worth reading," she explained. "It was quite brisk and breezy, but it had such affectionate things in it." It also has very useful suggestions, including the following: "Close your mouth and then blow out a candle with your nose and that teaches a child how to blow its nose." Sometimes the simplest advice is the best.

Christina Hardyment is at the Oxford Literary Festival at 6pm tomorrow. Dream Babies is published by Frances Lincoln at £12.99.