In The Gardener and the Carpenter, Alison Gopnik, one of the world's leading child psychologists, illuminates the paradoxes of parenthood from a scientific perspective and shatters the myth of "good parenting".
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.
"Bracing and thoughtful . . . Educators looking to resist the current vogue for highly scripted, teacher-driven lesson modules will be delighted by Gopnik's strong scientific case for letting children guide their own learning . . . Gopnik never veers from her faith in the warm human bond between caregiver and child that drives not only 'the pathos, but also the moral depth' of being a parent." --Erika Christakis, The Washington Post
"Fascinating and passionate . . . A welcome corrective to the results-driven approach to parenting." --Bee Wilson, The Guardian
"Alison Gopnik's The Gardener and the Carpenter should be required reading for anyone who is, or is thinking of becoming, a parent . . . Hers is a rare erudition: scholarly, yes, but accessible and rooted in her experience as a mother and grandmother . . . Gopnik's science-based assertion is a welcome corrective to the prevailing culture of coaching and tutoring children--often at great expense--to avoid failure." --Isabel Berwick, Financial Times
"[ The Gardener and the Carpenter] calls into question the modern notion that good parents can mold their children into successful adults . . . Children are not supposed to become like their parents; they learn from them to create something new. Each generation is different from the ones before. And that, Gopnik suggests, is the whole point of being human." --Courtney Humphries, The Boston Globe
"Deeply researched . . . [Gopnik's] approach focuses on helping children to find their own way . . . She describes a wide range of experiments showing that children learn less through 'conscious and deliberate teaching' than through watching, listening, and imitating." --Josie Glausiusz, Nature
"What a relief to find a book that takes a stand against the practice of "helicopter parenting" so prevalent today . . . [ The Gardener and the Carpenter] not only dispels the myth of a single best model for good parenting but also backs up its proposals with real-life examples and research studies . . . This book will provide helpful inspiration for parents and may prompt some to rethink their strategies." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
Introduction: The Parent Paradoxes
From Parenting to Being a Parent
The Paradoxes
The Paradoxes of Love
The Paradoxes of Learning
The Uniqueness of Childhood
The Child Garden
1. Against Parenting
In Praise of Mess
The Ideas That Die in Our Stead
Exploring vs. Exploiting
Protective Parents
2. The Evolution of Childhood
Two Pictures
Beyond Just-So Stories
The Paradox of Immaturity
Learning, Culture, and Feedback Loops
Variability: The Unknown Unknowns
Back to Parenting
3. The Evolution of Love
Pair-Bonding: It's Complicated
Varieties of Love
Grandmothers
Alloparents
The Commitment Puzzle
The Roots of Commitment
The Costs of Commitment
Love and Parenting
4. Learning Through Looking
The Little Actors
The Myth of Mirror Neurons
The Birth of Imitation
Learning About the World
When Children Are Better Than Adults
Overimitation
Rituals
Imitation Across Cultures
Doing Things Together
5. Learning Through Listening
Learning from Testimony
Being Sure of Yourself
Who You Gonna Believe?
Telling Stories
Questions and Explanations
Why Ask Why?
The Essential Question
Letting the Dude Figure It Out
6. The Work of Play
Rough-and-Tumble Rats
Getting Into Everything
Pop-Beads and Popper
Making Believe
Bayesian Babies
Kinds of Minds
Dancing Robots
Beyond Miss Havisham
7. Growing Up
Apprenticeship
Scholastic Skills
Thinking Differently
Attention Deficit Disorder
Schooling and Learning
The People in the Playground
The Two Systems of Adolescence
8. The Future and the Past: Children and Technology
The Reading Brain
The World of Screens
Eden and Mad Max
The Technological Ratchet
The City of the Web
What to Do?
9. The Value of Children
Private Ties and Public Policy
Finding the Money
The Old and the Young
Work, Play, Art, Science
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Inde
Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of The Philosophical Baby and The Scientist in the Crib.
Picador USA
Pub Date: August 01, 2017
0.8" H x 8.2" L x 5.5" W
320 pages
paperback