An intriguing assessment of the effectiveness of a variety of global parenting customs.
A close examination of parenting practices across the globe.
At some point, all parents wonder if they are raising their children the “right” way. In this well-researched analysis of parenting tactics, the LeVines (co-authors: Literacy and Mothering: How Women's Schooling Changes the Lives of the World's Children, 2012, etc.) compare and contrast how parents from different cultures and ethnic groups—from Japan and China to Kenya and Central America—take care of their children. The authors studied the way women are treated in various cultures and discovered that differences are evident from the first moments of pregnancy. For instance, members of the Gusii tribe in Kenya believe it is wrong to announce the pregnancy, as it might draw ill will from the other women in the tribe. Compare that to the attitude in the United States, where the possibility of a child is usually announced as soon as possible. Hindus and Buddhists in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal believe menstruation and birth are sources of pollution and take actions to prevent the contamination of others, while fathers in Central and South America are present throughout the entire pregnancy and birth. Once the child is born, breast-feeding is the norm, but there are vast differences in sleep habits and regarding how to talk to the infant or show signs of affection. The authors also examine a child’s access to toys, interactions with his siblings, the possibility of going to school and/or having chores or work to do, and the role each parent plays in the child’s early development. Overall, as many parents have grown to understand, the research shows that there is no one “right” way to parent, as every culture has its own traditions, but readers will learn helpful ideas from other countries, picking and choosing those that make the most sense for their individual situations.
An intriguing assessment of the effectiveness of a variety of global parenting customs.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61039-723-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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