A fresh, eye-opening reexamination of the father’s role in the family, full of stimulating contrarian insights.
Nielsen argues that fathers are just as competent, devoted, and central to kids’ well-being as mothers in this nonfiction work.
The author, a psychology professor at Wake Forest University, takes aim at the conventional wisdom that considers mothers the mainstays of child rearing and relegates fathers to a supporting role as breadwinners and child care assistants who can be dispensed with after a divorce. On the contrary, she asserts that dads are essential, stating that kids raised with their father in the home are healthier and better adjusted, have higher graduation rates, and are less prone to delinquency, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, depression, and anxiety. Fathers’ hands-on parenting is just as important as the income they provide, Nielsen contends. The author further reports that babies and toddlers with attentive dads sleep better and receive cognitive benefits from a father’s tendency to engage in play that’s more stimulating and challenging and that fathers provide reality checks that hold kids accountable and teach them to overcome problems and cope with frustration and failure. She offers proposals for shoring up fathers’ positions, including increased paid paternity leave, 50-50 shared custody arrangements, and a plea for wary moms to embrace a more integral parenting role for dads. The author cites a wealth of sociological statistics and scientific studies but also probes the cultural conventions we apply to fatherhood, exploring everything from the caricature of uncommunicative, emotionally clueless husbands in pop-psychology tomes like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus to the parade of incompetent, absentee, and deadbeat dads in movies. She writes in a lucid, down-to-earth style that’s free of academic cant and replete with tart wisdom (“The main reason most husbands do less of the work in and around the home is the same reason they don’t get to spend as much time with the children as their wives: their jobs….[T]hat doesn’t justify villainizing men as lazy bums who do nothing more than lift their legs off the floor so their wives can vacuum”). Dads and moms alike will find much to ponder here.
A fresh, eye-opening reexamination of the father’s role in the family, full of stimulating contrarian insights.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781032348254
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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