Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children [Paperback]

Meredith Small (Author)

Book Description

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

Review

“A revealing perspective on how and why we raise children as we do.” — Booklist

"Her concise, readable treatment of cross-cultural differences in child-rearing will interest everyone from high school students to grandparents, with or without children." --Library Journal

“Admirably ambitious.” — Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Meredith F. Smaill is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University and the author of Our Babies, Ourselves; What's Love Got to Do with It?; and Female Choices. She writes frequently for Natural History Magazine, Discover, Scientific American, and is a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (October 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385496281
• ISBN-13: 978-0385496285
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #448,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not ground breaking, May 18, 2010

By 

C. Ackerman (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

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

This book is a slightly quirky example of what could be called `social constructionism books'. These books typically take some sacred cow of Western culture that is widely believed to be obvious, natural and eternal and then knock it off its pedestal by showing (a) that not all cultures believe it even exists and in fact in the grand scheme of things our views are bizarre and (b) that our not-so-distant ancestors believed something entirely different about the subject at hand. I have read an awful lot of these books and have to admit that this is not one of the better ones.

There are two reasons, I think, why I didn't feel the excitement I normally feel when reading such books. First, childhood in the modern US is already controversial, so there aren't as many sacred cows to be gored. Many of the things that we do, like exhaustive extracurricular scheduling and teaching to tests, have many American critics, so a more global perspective isn't as mind opening as it could be in other contexts. Likewise, I'm old enough to have witnessed tremendous changes in childcare in my own life, so it's obvious to me that no one approach is 'natural'. (I don't think I'm _that_ old; child-raising just seems to be subject to fads.)

The second reason I'm not gobsmacked by this book is that it tries to link behavior to biology. This has such a nasty legacy --- such rhetoric has been fallaciously used to justify so many inequalities (e.g., claims that particular ethnic groups deserve to be poor because they're less intelligent)--- that I think it behooves authors to be extremely thoughtful about whether such theories are really ready for prime time before they're repeated in pop social science books. There's nothing morally obnoxious like that in this book, but the biological explanations don't necessarily add that much either. I don't, for example, think it adds much to use science to talk about how child abuse tends to be directed toward children who are valued less. That's just Cinderella. (It's actually much more interesting when the book reverses the direction of causality and explores how children biologically react to the stress in their environment.)

So what I mainly got out of the book was tidbits, trivia about different child-raising practices across the globe. If I hadn't read so many books already done in this style or if I hadn't been reading about kids so much of late, I'd probably have a more enthusiastic reaction. Personally, if I were to recommend just one book with a global perspective on kids, it would be _Preschool in Three Cultures_. (Incidentally, that book also works well in college classrooms.)

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book on childhood in different cultures, August 5, 2008

By 

S. T. H. Thesingh (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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

A very good book that just like Our Babies, Ourselves make you think on how you want to raise children. Some people say Small is biased. I beg to differ on that. I think she writes in a way which shows quite well how biology and culture and individual choice shape childhood. Recommended reading if you're really interested in raising children, at least in my opinion.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Follow Up to "Our Babies, Ourselves", March 9, 2008

By 

Michelle "naturalmamaof3" (New Orleans, LA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

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

I love Small's approach to childhood. As a parent who follows a more natural philosophy of childrearing and as a homeschooling, former public school teacher, her observations and discussions of studies and cultures resonate with me.