The article provides an overview of scientific research and opinion polls on the modern parents' satisfaction with the quality of school textbooks. The reasons for the dissatisfaction of the parental community are analyzed, the main shortcomings' list of teaching aids (as perceived by the parents) is given, the social context against which parental protests are growing is described. The parents' attitude towards school textbooks is viewed through the prism of changing the parents' role both as participants in the educational process and as potential authors of new textbooks. The aspects of the parents' attitude to electronic textbooks and digitalization in education are touched upon.