Ready Or Not: What Happens When We Treat Children As Small Adults [Paperback]

Kay Hymowitz (Author)

Book Description

“Children grow up too fast today!” This complaint, often tinged with a sense of bewilderment and helplessness, is heard with increasing frequency among parents today. Indeed, even the preteen “tweens” are sophisticated beyond their years, experiencing, sexual and emotional aspects of life heretofore considered “adult” and facing emotional and material overload that in the relatively recent past would have daunted people twice their age. In Ready or Not, Kay Hymowitz offers a startling look at the forces in the popular culture that bombard our children today. In particular she shows how “experts” urging us to treat children as “small adults” have affected our ideas about childhood. The most pernicious effect of this new development, she believes, is that the independence and other trappings of maturity that children are given (rather than earning) at an early age makes them paradoxically less able to negotiate the passage to adulthood than their predecessors in an earlier, more protective time.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The kids aren't alright, says Kay S. Hymowitz: Americans are doing a lousy job of raising their children. The next generation isn't being socialized properly, she elaborates, and the result is a country full of sexually active youngsters and exploding juvenile crime rates. "Until the middle of the twentieth century, it was considered an obvious fact that children are prone to cruelty, aggression, and boundless egotism and that a major purpose of their upbringing is to restrain and redirect those impulses," writes Hymowitz, a mother of three. Today, however, so-called experts have advanced "the idea that children are autonomous, independent individuals discovering their own reality." Perhaps this is natural in a country that values individualism, she says, but that doesn't mean adults--parents, teachers, and neighbors--should abandon their traditional roles as authority figures and moral guides. "The truth is, children are ignorant," says Hymowitz; they need adults to help them grow up. Ready or Not emphasizes the problem at the expense of suggesting solutions, but perhaps this is appropriate. There is a real freshness in the author's argument that won't be found elsewhere, but after reading her book, many will wonder how we could have missed the truth for so long. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Asking how we can raise morally responsible children while nurturing their individuality, Hymowitz critiques the radical individualism that seems to have subsumed concern for the common good, the narrow vocationalism of much education, a vulgar and sensationalized media and the insidious ways in which such natural childhood activities as play and exploration have been channeled toward enhanced cognition and academic achievement. The author, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, advocates somewhat nostalgically for a return to the republican childhood of the 19th centuryA"a profound moral achievement"Athat she believes effectively socialized the young into life as active democratic citizens. In a clear and accessible style, Hymowitz draws on the work of educational and psychological theorists, as well as popular culture, to develop her arguments. Unfortunately, the book suffers from a number of conceptual weaknesses, including the notion of "anticulturalism" (the belief that today's youth are being raised outside the influence of culture) and that we can overcome anomie and nihilism by constructing and transmitting a "common culture" (whose culture this would be remains largely unaddressed). Those readers who believe that contemporary social problems can be solved with a renewed emphasis on old-fashioned family values, back-to-basics schooling and rejuvenated adult authority will find much in this book resonant. Those who question the viability of returning to a romanticized past will find the complex issues addressed here oversimplified and framed in rather tired ideological terms. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1st Ppbk Ed Published 2000 edition (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554201
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554207
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #876,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent presentation, December 7, 1999

By 

Donald E. Gerhardt (Parkton, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ready or Not: Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future--and Ours (Hardcover)

This book by Kay Hymowitz is excellent and should be read by all parents and educators. It explains just how far society has strayed from giving our children the guidance they need to succeed.

I picked up the book with the hope of understanding some of the disturbing changes in the students entering graduate school. I was not disappointed.

The author's insight, views and interpretations of the ideas and the events taking place in our society and how they are affecting the current generations are right on the mark. All the consequences discussed by Ms. Hymowitz confront me every day. Most notable is the general lack of maturity and discipline in their lives. This lack of discipline extends from their social behavior and dress to their study habits and commitment to learning. Preparing for a professional career takes desire, dedication and hard work. To many students this is a foreign concept. They are truly lost souls, and "Ready or Not" by Kay Hymowitz explains extremely well why this is so.

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a knockout book, September 6, 2001

By 

"jimj8_2" (San Antonio Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ready or Not: Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future--and Ours (Hardcover)

This book will give you straight answers and no educratese, no vague generalities, no junkspeak. Anybody who has spent time in a high school classroom needs answers, and this book has them. I have long wondered where the attitude that kids can raise themselves came from; the mindless idea that all children need is love, heavy warm eye contact, strokes, and flattery to develop them into mature adults; that children will always choose what is best for them --- in clothing, food, activities and entertainment --- if only stupid adults would stand aside. This book discusses that wierd, wierd, wierd idea. The reviewer who says that youth crime and violence is the same as in 1970 I suspect is simply prevaricating. But the idea that letting young people have anything they want --- or know to want --- is a wise parenting and teaching strategy has thoroughly permeated the society. Our local newspaper yesterday came out with an article about how parents are finding it difficult to say 'no' to ten-year-old girls who want to dress like streetwalkers in tube tops and jeans that show their navels. Maybe that's why certain male intellectuals cling to the idea; they just might love seeing those little girls in tube tops. Hmmmmmm?
The idea that young people are self-regulating devices seems to have soaked in at all levels and all cultures in this country. This books tells us where that idea came from and why certain people are busy disseminating it. It's a branch or sub-genre of Romanticism, the myth of the Noble Savage, and all the silly pastoralism that goes along with it. People who subscribe most determinedly to anticulturalism do so because they like to think of themselves as superior in kindness and refinement and insightto those who have a grip on reality. They are also lazy. It takes work to say No. Read this book!

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Overview Book, June 27, 2000

By 

Chickensoup (States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ready or Not: Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future--and Ours (Hardcover)

Hymowitz has provided a great overview of our current cultural syndrome. Unlike Kirkus, I do not think "anticulture" thesis is a strawman. Instead I find it to be a fascinating and effective description of the phenomena parents fight (or ignore) on a daily basis. The culturaly elite perspective (which permeates the Kirkus review) takes a deserved beating. I have placed this book on my website recommend list bookshelf because I think this book will help intellegent parents discern the background that drives and intensifies their parenting concerns. Good Work! Dear Mrs. Web