<![CDATA[Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children]]>

false <![CDATA[Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children]]> 2407016 2 In this probing inquiry into America’s preoccupation with raising children, Ann Hulbert blends biography and critical analysis to probe the personal dramas, the scientific claims, and the social visions of a succession of experts who during the twentieth century aimed to make a science of child rearing. She describes how these pediatricians and psychologists came to be popular advisers, and explores the origins and outcome of their ambitious quest to predict and perfect children’s futures, and to solve the dilemmas of modern mothers and of families in flux. The story unfolds like a curious—and often contentious—family saga, featuring an odd couple of presiding experts in each generation: one a stern father figure espousing a nurture-counts-most, “parent-centered” emphasis on discipline; the other a “child-centered” proponent of gentler bonding as a child’s nature develops. They include turn-of-the-century pioneers L. Emmett Holt, whose precise infant-care regimens promised calm, healthy mothers as well as babies, and his counterpart, G. Stanley Hall, who “invented” adolescence as a special time of freedom and experimentation. Between the wars, the harsh behaviorist John Broadus Watson and the maturationist Arnold Gesell faced off with grander theories about children’s personalities and maternal responsibilities. In the postwar era, Benjamin Spock, a genial Freudian intent on finessing debates between bonders and disciplinarians, soared to prominence—only to be confronted on the antiwar barricades by a fiercer Freudian, Bruno Bettelheim, and then attacked by feminists in the early 1970s. As the millennium approached, a new host of advisers contended for primacy—from cognitive experts anxious to fine-tune children’s intellectual growth to parenting-specialists-turned-public-advocates from the right and the left issuing manuals and social manifestos to combat what they saw as the erosion of morality and harmony in a family-unfriendly America. Raising America is a provocative account of how a hundred years of expert advice clearly failed to ease modern child-raising anxieties. It makes clear that the advisers, with their shifting formulas and dogmas, in fact proved to be unnerving. Yet as their stories reveal, they have also been enlightening, holding up an intimate mirror to the rising social and psychological expectations and tensions of an unsettled century. 2414187 29 4 2003 Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children total:13|5:0|4:3|3:5|2:5|1:0| 13 37 44 6 3 0 false false Tue Jun 16 13:05:49 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 16 13:05:49 -0700 2009 2 1 false false Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jan 13 11:35:51 -0800 2009 Fri Apr 03 18:01:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 01 14:23:54 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 02 14:05:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri May 02 16:24:29 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 16:24:29 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 31 07:58:18 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 31 07:59:36 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Wed Nov 21 05:50:53 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 26 11:13:29 -0800 2007 Mentioned in Freakonomics]]> 2 0 false false Sun Nov 08 17:47:26 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 17:47:26 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Nov 01 11:01:23 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 01 11:01:29 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Aug 30 00:33:22 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 30 00:33:22 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Aug 12 12:36:45 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 12 12:36:45 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Jul 12 11:17:23 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 12 11:31:35 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jul 03 14:35:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 02 19:13:27 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 14:35:00 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Jun 02 08:29:27 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 02 08:29:27 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Mon Aug 31 13:17:15 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 02 05:50:14 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 13:17:15 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jun 01 18:53:58 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 18:53:58 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Jun 01 14:35:09 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 14:35:09 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue May 12 11:09:36 -0700 2009 Tue May 12 11:09:36 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Apr 17 21:59:38 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 21:59:38 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Feb 09 11:20:36 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 11:20:36 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Feb 06 10:00:12 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 06 10:00:12 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2407016