Childhood's Future [Hardcover]

Richard Louv (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1991

"A passionate call for rebuilding community and family life" (The New York Times Book Review ) that provides a concrete program of change to enable families to re-create their structural web.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With information gathered from groups of children, parents, teachers and others across the country, Louv ( America II ) offers a compassionate, comprehensive view of modern American family life. His portrait of childhood today is dominated by two findings. First is the meager time families spend together--time stolen by economic constraints that separate generations and send mothers to work. Second is a pervasive fear--called "stranger danger" and exemplified in nationwide anxiety over missing children, in which the perceived sense of danger is greater than reality warrants--that isolates families rather than encouraging connections to others. Louv, in proposing the way to "family liberation," examines the workplace, citing such companies as AT&T and Merck that offer flexible approaches to interweaving family and work lives. He suggests that schools expand their roles in their neighborhoods, e.g., to day care; that cities become "family-friendly"; that families, reaching beyond the nucleus to include grandparents and neighbors, allow children a longer period of dependence with plenty of "free time, dream time." Louv's massive documentation is made immediate by his vivid presentation of the people he met--lonely schoolkids and worried parents, all urging us to pay attention to, and meet, the needs of our children. First serial to the New York Times.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Journalist Louv spent three years interviewing children, parents, and educators about the problems afflicting childhood today and the ways in which the new "family liberation movement" can bring about positive changes. He offers myriad ideas, including an increase in family time, parent networks, family-oriented workplaces, and stronger ties between schools and the community. The interviews form the core of the book, but they are sometimes contradictory and lacking real cohesion. Rita Kramer's In Defense of the Family ( LJ 2/15/83) and Marie Winn's Children Without Childhood ( LJ 5/15/83) provide more thoughtful and well-written treatments of the subject. Expect some demand, however, since The New York Times Magazine and Sierra magazine plan to publish excerpts.
-Ilse Heidmann Ali, Motlow State Community Coll., Tullahoma, Tenn.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 420 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T) (January 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395464749
• ISBN-13: 978-0395464748
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,741,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

VISIT www.RichardLouv.com
TAKE ACTION AT www.childrenandnature.org


Richard Louv is a journalist and author of eight books about the connections between family, nature and community. His newest book is The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin), which offers a new vision of the future, in which our lives are as immersed in nature as they are in technology. This future, available to all of us right now, offers better psychological, physical and spiritual health for people of every age.

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Algonquin), translated into 10 languages and published in 15 countries, has stimulated an international conversation about the relationship between children and nature. Louv is also the founding chairman of the Children & Nature Network at www.childrenandnature.org, an organization helping build the movement to connect today's children and future generations to the natural world. Louv coined the term Nature-Deficit Disorder™ which has become the defining phrase of this important issue.

In 2008, he was awarded the Audubon Medal, presented by the National Audubon Society. Prior recipients have included Rachel Carson, E. O. Wilson and President Jimmy Carter. Louv is also the recipient of the Cox Award for 2007, Clemson University's highest honor, for "sustained achievement in public service" and has been a Clemson visiting professor. Among other awards, Louv is the recipient of the 2008 San Diego Zoological Society Conservation Medal, the 2008 George B. Rabb Conservation Medal from the Chicago Zoological Society, and the 2009 International Making Cities Livable Jane Jacobs Award. He also serves as Honorary Co-chairman, with artist Robert Bateman, of Canada's national Children and Nature Alliance.

Louv has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, and other major publications. He has appeared on many national TV shows, including NBC's Today Show and Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC's Good Morning America, and NPR's Morning Edition, Fresh Air, and Talk of the Nation. Between 1984 and 2007 he was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and has been a columnist and member of the editorial advisory board for Parents magazine. Louv was an advisor to the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World award program. He serves on the board of directors of ecoAmerica and is a member of the Citistates Group. He has appeared before the Domestic Policy Council in the White House as well as at major governmental and professional conferences, nationally and internationally, most recently as keynote speaker at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference.

He is married to Kathy Frederick Louv and the father of two young men, Jason, 29 and Matthew, 23. He would rather fish than write.