Do Parents Matter? Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax
Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine
ISBN: 9781610397230
Read September 17, 2016
An interesting cross-cultural study of various parenting practices and the outcomes observed, but flawed and limited in a lot of ways. Really makes one wish that there were larger groups studying this sort of thing in earnest - I think there would be a great deal of knowledge acquired that way, but it might not be particularly flattering to the current medical/psychological concepts, so there's understandably little push for it.
The authors use personal anthropological/sociological observations and those collected by other groups to make comments about various parenting tactics and supposedly basic concepts, inferring from their observations that there is very little universal about how children are nurtured and raised, and that despite that vast gulf of differences, mainly the adults end up as well-adjusted adults in their respective societies.
I would have liked more citations or deeper explanations, as a lot of things are hand-waved or offhandedly explained without backing: I want to be clear that I don't think they're faking any of their information, or purposefully being misleading, I just wanted to have a clearer understanding of what they're basing that on (which would have made this a much thicker and more scholarly book, so I can completely understand why they chose not to).
Overall interesting, but it raises a lot more questions than it answers.
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