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Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children Paperback – Illustrated, April 13, 2004

by Ann Hulbert (Author)
3.2 3.2 out of 5 stars 15 ratings
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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, millions of anxious parents have turned to child-rearing manuals for reassurance. Instead, however, they have often found yet more cause for worry. In this rich social history, Ann Hulbert analyzes one hundred years of shifting trends in advice and discovers an ongoing battle between two main approaches: a “child-centered” focus on warmly encouraging development versus a sterner “parent-centered” emphasis on instilling discipline. She examines how pediatrics, psychology, and neuroscience have fueled the debates but failed to offer definitive answers. And she delves into the highly relevant and often turbulent personal lives of the popular advice-givers, from L. Emmett Holt and Arnold Gesell to Bruno Bettelheim and Benjamin Spock to the prominent (and ever conflicting) experts of today.
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  1. Print length
    464 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    April 13, 2004
  4. Dimensions
    5.19 x 1.05 x 8 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0375701222
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0375701221
  7. See all details
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3.2 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • S. Williams
    5.0 out of 5 stars Child raising in perspective
    Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    If you find yourself overrun with child raising advise, reading this may help you step back and discover the history of some of tha advise, and how childhood has changed in our modern time.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Cameron Vanzura
    2.0 out of 5 stars payoff no worth the effort
    Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This book lost my interest by including way too much detail. It spent too much time on the back story and not enough time talking about the changes in ideas I can see how this may appeal to some but for me it made the book feel excessive and long. I bought it after listening to an interview with the author which made it sound very interesting, & I am sure that it is but there is too much to read through to get to the parts that are interesting.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Gail Cornwall
    4.0 out of 5 stars Well done, but not light reading
    Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2019
    Ann Hulbert chronicles how twentieth-century parenting experts in the United States have offered dramatically varied “dogmas and data,” reflecting “American confusions about children’s natures and futures, and about mothers’ missions.” The new plague of anxiety about child-rearing, it turns out, is actually as old as the plague itself: “pick any post-medieval century as it turns,” Hulbert writes, “and you can find historians proclaiming a notable shift in, and rising concern about, parent-child relations.” That’s comforting. So too is her conclusion that the experts “have fared no better or worse than the rest of us in the quest for calm consistency in child-rearing technique and theory.” And Raising America contains a good deal of interesting information and reflection. Yet Hulbert’s is a copiously researched historian’s history of the central dilemma (“is it more discipline or more bonding that they need at home?”) and as such, one I recommend only for those hoping to feel like a college student again.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Michael Gorsline, MA
    5.0 out of 5 stars Can Parenting Experts Offer Us More Than Confusion?
    Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2003
    After about 3 minutes of hearing Hulbert talk about the history of parenting advice this century on NPR, I knew I needed this book. I am in a peculiar position as a Parent Coach/Instructor and as a skeptic. Among other things I teach a very specific approach to parenting based on Love and Logic (See my review of Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood). Yet while I teach a specific approach to helping parents make their lives a bit easier, I am also a skeptic at heart and therefore strive to examine all approaches to parenting with a critical eye, allowing the evidence to point where it may.
    With painstaking detail and with considerable wit, Hulbert takes us through the century and helps us to see that parents have been anxious about how their kids would turn out for decades. She also shows that they frequently turn to the experts for guidance; experts who have an annoying habit of contradicting one another. Throughout the centry there has always been a "hard" approach to parenting advocated as well as a "soft" approach advocated usually by two separate experts. Many experts have, and continue to make exaggerated claims about the results of taking their advice. James Watson the famous behaviorist was the paragon of this sort of wild claim, deciding based on a few experiments with white furry things and a scared infant that he knew the secrets to take any sort of child and raise them for a career of his selection and with the character of his choice.
    A century later, much is the same though there are some important differences. We continue to have an array of voices with a good deal of overlap as well as with a number of contradictions. The difference now perhaps is that there are approaches all along the continuum from soft to hard, rather than one or two at either end. Hulbert implies that all the contradicitons make it unlikely that anyone has a corner on the "correct" approach. Her NPR interview got at the practical and important point for parents at the how to bookshelf. Parents are wise to pick from among techniques offered by approaches that resonate with their core values. My take on the situation, since I am a therapist by trade, is that parenting experts are much like psychotherapy approaches. The research is clear that no one approach is heads and shoulders above others concerning measurable outcomes for therapy. However, it is clear that for people suffering from anxiety and depression, for example, therapy is certainly better than no treatment. My guess is that the results are the same with parenting. I suspect that most people taking a well organized parenting class do better than people with the same intitial skill level taking no class. I further would recommend that people pick a style that teaches mutual respect. Another key is an approach that is practical enough to teach parents how to set, healthy, reasonable limits in a way that is loving. Most people soon tire of being in the company of a child who runs the house and who is very tuned in to their own feelings and needs, but who lack the balance of knowing how to be respectful of others.
    Hulbert makes superb work of bringing big parenting experts of the past century to life and letting us in on some of the details that they might have preferred not be shared openly. I found it particularly helpful to read up on Spock, as we frequently hear his name as a common cultural reference, but I like most people wasn't familiar with the fascinating and sweeping trajectory that his advice and his career took. Hulbert knows her stuff. It would be wonderful to have a conversation with her about this history of parenting experts and how they measure up to the research, including the significant blows that Judith Harris dealt developmental psycholgy by being the first to make a widely publicized stink about the lack of controls for the role genetics, and the and the failure to account for kids having effects on adults' parenting in The Nurture Assumption (another must read for those serious about understanding what we know about parenting styles). I suspect I won't get a chance at the conversation with Hulbert, but this book was a superb second best.
    25 people found this helpful
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  • Elizabeth Schmitt
    4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2015
    No time to do so now.
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  • Youpple
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book about how nobody knows the right way
    Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019
    Loved the book. It helps you to understand that nobody knows the right way, each parent has to decide for themselves.
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  • Suzanne Amara
    3.0 out of 5 stars Centered on the experts, not the advise or children
    Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2004
    Perhaps my very mixed feelings about this book came from unmet expectations. I thought it would be a book about the history of the actual advise given American parents---how advise about such issues as toilet training, sleep and eating have changed over the years, and how this affected parents. However, the book was actually much more about the experts themselves---THEIR childhoods, education, marital problems, academic careers, etc. This might be interesting to some, but it wasn't to me for the most part. The book had a feel of an insider sort of expose---written for those in the academic world. Children were mentioned very little, except if they happened to be the children of the experts themselves. There was much delving into the psychological history of each expert, but I found that at times I had a very vague idea what the experts actually advised! For example, Hall, an early expert, had his life opened for scrutiny, but I would be hard pressed to explain what his child care views were. The writing was scholary and confident, but in no way personal---the author's children or her own views are not mentioned. So I guess I would just advice that you know what you want to read about before buying this book---It might be just what you are looking for, but it might be far from what you are looking for.
    60 people found this helpful
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