Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book!!
Review: This book is both informative and enlightening. It brings one back to what Child Care was always meant to be. Everyone raising children should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Gives you a new daemon.
Review: Having read this book while pregnant with my first child, I incorporated much of its philosophy into how I nurture my child. I am more attached to my son, and he to me, than I ever could have dreamed, and I owe much of the joy of our relationship to Jean Liedloff. I could write many more accolades, but my son has climbed onto my lap...
Rating:
Summary: All parents need to read this.
Review: I oftentimes puzzle over how the problems of the world could be solved. After reading "The Continuum Concept" I was struck by the comon sense contained within and realized if these ideas were put to use we may have a solution to many of the world's problems.
Rating:
Summary: A simple, profound, important book.
Review: This book is one of the most perceptive I have ever read, and has far-reaching implications for the study of human psychology. In fact, psychology, and the pursuit of happiness, etc., all fail to serve human beings unless they take into account the same human factors so eloquently discussed in this book. As John Holt said 'If the world could be saved by a book, this might be the book.
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Summary: This book touched me as few others have...
Review: The ideas in this book are at the same time obvious and natural and completely revolutionary from the point of view of our cultural norms in child-raising. I found myself moved by the possibility that we can learn to raise our children so that "normal neurotic" is seen for what it is...the evidence of a childhood of profound lonliness and trauma. I heartily recommend this book. Especially if you've ever wondered what being an infant may be like from the infant's point of view..
Rating: 
Summary: Very good, should be read by parents new and old
Review: This book is thoughtful and exciting. Will most likley change your whole outlook on child growth and life itself.
Seems to contain minor contradictions but its main message
comes through strongly.
If you ever plan to raise a child, or have ever been one, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, interesting, enlightening book.
Review: Reading this....changed the way I think about childcare. Thebook is intelligent and emotional as it tries to express what feelsright in a "continuum" society and what feels terribly wrong in our own.I do think the book has its share of flaws. It is somewhat influenced by Liedloff's romanticized impression of the jungle and of the indigenous people, which is okay, except that it makes it questionable as true anthropology. Some of her conclusions are really not supported by science and are offensive today, like the ideas of how gay and lesbian people are produced (bad parent relationships). Please, Liedloff, rethink these things and print a new edition! It's for a good reason that this book is called "almost the companion book" to _Ishmael_, by Daniel Quinn. Both see something of great value in indigenous societies, and make an essentially successful attempt to show it to us. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed _The Continuum Concept_ and would recommend it to anyone expecting a child.
Rating:
Summary: what the book means and why it is useful
Review: I give this book 4 out of 5 stars because it isn't wonderfully written, but the ideas in it are important. Based on some of the other readers' opinions, I gather that people are unaware of the situation Jean Liedloff was in when she wrote the book.
Let's address the "politically incorrect" charge laid on this book. It was originally written back in 1975. Back in 1975, an untrained (or even a trained) anthropologist would not have used politically correct terms to describe tribes living in South America. I hate when people don't bother to look at the details and put things out of context.
The other charge, that she went to the forest as a "diamond plunderer", then condemns her for it, totally misses the point of her book. Yes, she went there in a state of total ignorance. The whole point of her book is that by living with "primitives" she became aware of the artificiality, the dreariness of Western society. Her book reads like exactly what it was--a polemic written by a young woman who had a zeal to change the world, who was so full of the ideas and insights she learned from leaving behind her Western-centric view that she must share them with the world. Yes, her book is at times heavy-handed. No, it's not full of references to other books because, again, this is HER experience and she is not trying to rely on the opinions of "experts" to bolster her view. I did not at all get the impression that this was a professional ethnography. When I read the book, I got a sense of a woman who believes she has valuable information that she wants to share with the world and wrote a book to do so. By doing so, she certainly opened my eyes. I never knew that these tribes living out in the wilderness were happy and free in a way contemporary "civilized" societies never seem to be.
A very good book to read alongside this book is "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Dr. Weston A. Price. He tackles the health and happiness of "primitive" tribes from a nutritional standpoint. Reading them together should prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what we are doing wrong as "modern" peoples and what we can try and do to correct and overcome our mistakes. Of course, no one is advocating a return to the forests to live like our ancestors, but for heaven's sake, we can certainly adapt what our tribal cousins know but we somehow forgot.
Is it possible that wars, disease, and social unrest might be caused by poor nutrition as Price suggests or failure of parents to keep their babes "in arms" as Liedloff suggests? I think it is.
Just be forewarned..."Nutritional and Physical Degeneration", written in the 1930s contains similar politically incorrect terminology. If you are going to judge a book by how politically correct its terms are, you might as well stop reading anything classical or anything older than 1995.
Just give the book a try and try to keep an open mind as Liedloff and Price did.
Rating: 
Summary: Brick of salt
Review: This is a fascinating book, and asks some compelling questions about what is 'normal' and 'desirable' in parenting. Much of it is good, common sense dialogue on what is biologically appropriate for children.
On the other hand, it has to be taken with salt. 1) Leidoff is/was not a trained anthropologist, and it would be far too easy for an outsider to make critical mistakes interpreting a vastly different culture. 2) Liedoff did not/does not have any children, which would likely change her perspective. 3) There is a strong emphasis on trusting your instincts (good), but not if it disagrees with the way Yequana do things (bad). 4) Her attitude that children and babies should be trusted to look out for their own physical well being (i.e., they don't need gates or to be watched closely near water, etc) incorrectly assumes that all babies are born with the same high level of self-preservation. While babies who had a lesser sense of safety and danger may have been 'naturally selected out' in tribal cultures, I don't think most people would (or should) willingly embrace 'survival of the fittest' among their own offspring.
There's more, but in short, I think that while Leidoff was/is really onto something, she's too enthusiastic to be thoroughly objective. Be careful of taking too much at face value.
Rating:
Summary: Possibly the only parenting book you will ever need
Review: This is the most important book anyone in Western society could ever read, whether or not they have children. If only I could buy a trillion copies and drop them out of an airplane, blanketing the earth! You must read it to know what I mean.
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