The gardener and the carpenter : what the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children / Alison Gopnik.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-287) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: The parent paradoxes -- Against parenting -- The evolution of childhood -- The evolution of love -- Learning through looking -- Learning through listening -- The work of play -- Growing up -- The future and the past : children and technology -- The value of children.
Summary:
Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call 'parenting' is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar twenty-first-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong--it's not just based on bad science, it's bad for kids and parents, too. Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. -- Back cover.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.