Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children [Hardcover]

Meredith Small (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0385496273 | ISBN-13: 978-0385496278 | Publication Date: April 17, 2001 | Edition: 1

To what extent do our parenting practices help or hinder our children? As parents, how much influence do we have over what kind of people our children will grow up to be? In the follow-up to her critically acclaimed Our Babies, Ourselves, Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small now takes on these and other crucial questions about the development of preschool children aged one to six.

While Our Babies, Ourselves explored the physical and cultural preconceptions behind child-rearing and offered new clues to parenting practices that might be detrimental to a baby's best interest, Kids delves even deeper. Unraveling the deep-seated notions prescribed in most parenting books, Kids combines the latest scientific research on human evolution and biology with Small's own keen observations of various cultures for a lively, eye-opening view of early childhood in America. Small not only reveals how children in this age group socialize and absorb the rules that underlie the societies they live in; she also explains the extent to which parents enhance or hold back the emotional and psychological growth of their kids.

In her engaging style, Small blends memorable accounts from her own experiences raising a preschooler with fascinating findings from her pioneering cross-cultural research, which spanned the country as well as the globe. Covering myriad aspects of the miraculous process of human growth, Small breaks new ground on topics such as why childhood is the optimum time for acquiring language skills; how children absorb knowledge and learn to solve problems; how empathy, and morality in general, make their way into a child's psyche; and the ways in which gender impacts identity. Underlying each chapter is an illuminating discussion of how the roles parents assign children in America shape the self-esteem and self-image of a future generation.
Rich with vivid anecdotes and profound insight, Kids will cause readers to rethink their own parenting styles, along with every age-old assumption about how to raise a happy, healthy kid.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Small (Our Babies, Ourselves), a Cornell University anthropologist, compares Western child-rearing practices with those of various non-Western peoples, as well as other mammals, in an effort to "go beyond the narrow confines of one culture, one socioeconomic class, and one species." Where her previous book explored the way culture shapes parenting during an infant's first year, this sequel examines the impact of culture on children's development of language, knowledge, moral reasoning, social roles and gender identity. Much of the book is devoted to scientific claims (especially those deriving from evolutionary biology and psychology) about childhood, a developmental stage unique to humans. She observes some disparities between "expert" and parental knowledge: apparently child development researchers assume "that kids all over the world are essentially the same," yet even among parents in the West, "[t]here is no consensus on the nature of the child." Small also challenges some widely held contemporary Western beliefs, arguing, for example, that although the nuclear family is "accepted in this culture as the `best' family environment for children," there are many advantages to extended families and other forms of communal child rearing. Unfortunately, she has a tiresome knack for stating the obvious ("a child brought up on a rural farm in Kenya is different in most ways from a child brought up in an upper-class household in America"; "the brain is surely one of the big mysteries of science"). Although Small's book is admirably ambitious, it is science lite and may frustrate any reader who has given serious thought to its subject.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Small (anthropology, Cornell Univ.) continues the work she started in Our Babies, Ourselves (LJ 07/98), a study of the impact of culture on how we raise infants. Here she focuses on children between one and six, arguing that if we understand the full range of approaches to caring for children, we are more likely to take into account both biological needs and cultural assumptions about what children need and what should be expected from them. Especially fascinating are chapters on language acquisition and children's work. The final two chapters, which are culturally relative perspectives on child abuse and overscheduling children in day care, lessons, and organized social activities, are likely to stimulate discussion, if not controversy. Her concise, readable treatment of cross-cultural differences in child-rearing will interest everyone from high school students to grandparents, with or without children. If the success of her previous books is any indication, Small will have a strong publicity push, with TV and radio time, so patrons will be asking after this. Highly recommended for school, public, and academic libraries. Paula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (April 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385496273
• ISBN-13: 978-0385496278
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #626,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! I encourage all parents to read it!, July 1, 2001

By 

Patricia Carolina Tovar "Pat" (Margate, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children (Hardcover)

Without a doubt this is a book every parent should read as an aid in the never-ending process of tuning what we called our "parenting style". It's eye opening and revealing. The author compiles a fair and diverse amount of research in such controversial topics as "the especial place of childhood in human evolution", "acquisition of language", "development of the cognitive capacities" and "boy and a girl differences", that makes the book very well documented, interesting and appealing to every parent. Besides her very fluent and catching writing style, Small colors the text with her own anecdotes as a parent of a young child and her own dilemma about her "participation" in her child developmental process. This is an every day dilemma for every parent: Can I make my baby smarter?, what is "a smart kid" anyway? Can I really make a difference in his/her natural biological developmental path?, in what sense?, Should I even care to intervene in some aspects? How about the whole debate between nature and nurture influence? who's right? what's right? Am I doing wrong? Are there alternatives to what I believe to be the unique and better way to raise a child? Which ones? What should be our goal as parents?. This book will give you a broaden perspective on parenting and your role in providing the right "environment" for your child's innate and very human potential. I like that I can see my style within the worldwide frame of child rearing. I like that I can know more about how other people around the globe do it and works too, how other people do it and doesn't work as much, how everything is relative to culture and that there is a lot for us to learn from other groups, and a lot other groups could eventually learn from us. I like that I have found answers and more sense to some of my own and very amateur observations of the way people raise their kids. The pros, the cons, the trade-ins. The book contributes to clarify the perspective of a natural child rearing: what did nature intended for us to do as parents? Why did nature intended for human babies and children to have such relatively long very depending periods of life? How did nature intended for us to "care" for our young? What is the whole idea? After reading this book, even though I understand that we are "culturized" beings and that my family will develop within the context of a certain culture (whether I like it or not, whether I'm totally aware of it or not), I have the power to enhance our life with other people's view. I agree with Small, that even though much of our problems or "not very good" practices are culture based, that still doesn't make them right. I agree that in the West we are driven to have our young children behave as the adults we want them to become...and that it's not necessarily right. We, unrealistically, expect young children to sit still, don't talk back, and understand and follow the rules of a "modernized" society (politeness), we are concerned for the education of our children: we love to teach them colors, numbers and shapes, and we want them to be independent and individual achievers...we love competition and we as parents are great competitors, one against the others: who is best? "My baby walked at 9 months, how about yours?" "Mine says 25 words, counts to three and knows five colors and she is only 13 months, how about yours?"...like if that matter much on how happy and well develop our children are. But I understand that those are culturally based values and if we all understood that, it would be so liberating...those measurements wouldn't mean a thing to a parent in most of West Africa, and they are as human as we are. I couldn't put the book down and I'm still positively overwhelmed by all I read. The book is a great source of information and the insights of Small experiences (both professionally and personally) makes it worthwhile. I hope every parent, grandparent, child-care provider, teacher and just every one who is involved with kids could read this book.

0 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars poor what a dissapointment, February 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children (Hardcover)

all i can say is i am a father of 3 kids and that book was a load of bollocks read at your own peril