christic
09-20-2003, 08:40 PM
(An old post, bumping it up for DeborahR who asked about the book)
I don't post a lot here and apologize if it seems I'm butting in, but reading all of the back and forth about parenting styles and experts reminded me of a book I read recently, Raising America. It's a history of child care experts and their effect on parenting practices from 1900 on. It also takes a close look at the experts' own family lives and whether they followed their own advice or not.
Some very interesting points come out that seem to relate to the discussions going on here:
* There have always been both parent-centered and child-centered experts throughout the period. The idea that years ago ALL experts recommended putting babies on schedules and not responding to cries is just not true. Yes there was a guy back in the 20s who said you should shake hands with your toddler in the morning!, but there were also experts at that same time researching how important attachment (or lack of it in an institutional setting) was in a child's life.
* The author quotes a lot from a novel written about the Wellesly class of 1930 that shows mothers struggling with breastfeeding and even one who wears her baby in a sling. She gets some weird looks from her classmates but it sounds similar to reactions people describe getting in the local mall today.
* Many of these experts used their own research to back up their recommendations, but research on child rearing is always limited by the fact that you are dealing with a human child. It can't simply take place in a lab, and relying on parental reports of their own practices and results is far from fool proof.
* Many of these experts, from both the parent-centered and baby-led camps, have had close ties to religious groups. Today if you look at a Dobson on one end and Sears at the other, they both orignally wrote for a specifically Christian audience, removing religious references as they reached wider audiences.
* Every one of these experts faced challenges with their own families, some fared better than others, but no one seemed to follow even their own advice to the letter.
What I got from the book was a sense of how contentious these arguments have been for more than a century (the tie to religious/social/moral issues adds to the passion), how little parenting philosophy has actually changed throughout this whole time, and how impossible it is to prove in the end who's right and who's wrong. After 100 years, it's a given that discussions about parenting styles will continue and that they'll get heated at times.
The book offers no practical advice until the very end. I've read it here and said it myself that when it comes to picking parenting books you should read the ones you naturally feel the most comfortable with. She recommends just the opposite and says that when you really feel you're in a bind you should look to an expert who seems to completely go against your own parenting style. You can ignore the philosophy without guilt and pick and choose the practical tips and adapt them to your own style. It gives you a fresh approach to a problem and relieves you of that sense of failure that I know I've felt when my own philosophy isn't working.
So far that tiny piece of advice has been a great help to me and I wanted to pass it along!
I don't post a lot here and apologize if it seems I'm butting in, but reading all of the back and forth about parenting styles and experts reminded me of a book I read recently, Raising America. It's a history of child care experts and their effect on parenting practices from 1900 on. It also takes a close look at the experts' own family lives and whether they followed their own advice or not.
Some very interesting points come out that seem to relate to the discussions going on here:
* There have always been both parent-centered and child-centered experts throughout the period. The idea that years ago ALL experts recommended putting babies on schedules and not responding to cries is just not true. Yes there was a guy back in the 20s who said you should shake hands with your toddler in the morning!, but there were also experts at that same time researching how important attachment (or lack of it in an institutional setting) was in a child's life.
* The author quotes a lot from a novel written about the Wellesly class of 1930 that shows mothers struggling with breastfeeding and even one who wears her baby in a sling. She gets some weird looks from her classmates but it sounds similar to reactions people describe getting in the local mall today.
* Many of these experts used their own research to back up their recommendations, but research on child rearing is always limited by the fact that you are dealing with a human child. It can't simply take place in a lab, and relying on parental reports of their own practices and results is far from fool proof.
* Many of these experts, from both the parent-centered and baby-led camps, have had close ties to religious groups. Today if you look at a Dobson on one end and Sears at the other, they both orignally wrote for a specifically Christian audience, removing religious references as they reached wider audiences.
* Every one of these experts faced challenges with their own families, some fared better than others, but no one seemed to follow even their own advice to the letter.
What I got from the book was a sense of how contentious these arguments have been for more than a century (the tie to religious/social/moral issues adds to the passion), how little parenting philosophy has actually changed throughout this whole time, and how impossible it is to prove in the end who's right and who's wrong. After 100 years, it's a given that discussions about parenting styles will continue and that they'll get heated at times.
The book offers no practical advice until the very end. I've read it here and said it myself that when it comes to picking parenting books you should read the ones you naturally feel the most comfortable with. She recommends just the opposite and says that when you really feel you're in a bind you should look to an expert who seems to completely go against your own parenting style. You can ignore the philosophy without guilt and pick and choose the practical tips and adapt them to your own style. It gives you a fresh approach to a problem and relieves you of that sense of failure that I know I've felt when my own philosophy isn't working.
So far that tiny piece of advice has been a great help to me and I wanted to pass it along!