Customer Reviews

Paranoid Parenting: Why Ignoring the Experts May Be Best for Your Child

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Frank Furedi lectured to me at the University of Kent, using this book as the basis for a series of lectures about trust in contemporary society. His dynamic style of teaching prompted me to read this book and some of his other work, all of which I have been very impressed with. His style is very readable for people who do not have a sociological/psychological background, and the subjects that he chooses to investigate are very interesting.

If this is something that you are interested in, then I highly recommend it, but I also recommend it for anyone who has children/looks after children as it will open your eyes to the truths behind what the media tells us. An insight into how to keep your children safe in todays society, and when you have gone too far, this book is a good buy.

I first came across Frank Furedi from a radio interview. Since then I have been reading everything he writes. Paranoid Parenting is my favorite so far! It is like a voice of sanity admist a mass delusion and unsubstantiated panic that has gripped the collective unconscious of the US and UK, eventually leading to an end to adult authority and parental power, with only "therapists" in charge. Furedi debunks infant determinism that therapy culture clings so hard to, and people who like to blame their parents for their failures probably won't like this book!

This is a much needed book in our society right now. Furedi begins by discussing parental fears and parental over-protectiveness, and I don't agree with all his points there. I'm still going to be terrified of stranger abduction even if the odds are one in a million. Where he is strongest is in his critique of experts for undermining parental wisdom, parental authority when the topic is discipline, and his critique of a media culture that never tires of depicting parents in film and television as idiots and children as little sages.

He makes interesting points about infant determinism (the notion that an imperfect babyhood/childhood may very well condemn one to an entire life of ruin and misery), about the politicization of spanking and punishment in general, and about the self-interest of "experts" in making parents dependent upon them for every decision in order to justify their existence.

One of the most important points he makes is that so-called scientific studies, which many of these experts claim to employ in order to give their opinions a patina of scientific credibility, present results that change with the shifting sands. What was "proven" to promote infant/mother bonding last month is now "proven" to cause crib death this month, and so on.

If you regard Penelope Leach as a moron, as I do, and if you've ever read dozens of highly recommended and very popular childrearing books and rolled your eyes the whole way through, if you've ever felt disgusted by the way family is portrayed in the media, if you've ever wondered how and why "discipline" and "punishment" became such bad words, if you've ever tired of hearing people blame their problems on something relatively minor that occurred in childhood, and if you've ever wondered whether crib bumper pads are really a common killer and how your own children managed to survive them - then this book is for you.

This book explains very well the growing paranoia of modern parents. This is a resolute attack against parenting determinism. It is regrettable, however, that the author's references are not more "scientific" than those he reproaches to parenting determinism advocates of using. Moreover, he is not far from praising spanking, which is "proven" very bad for children.