Raising America : Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children

Rating:
Summary: ambitous and flawed
Review: Well, first of all, if I were reading a book about kids, wanting to know about the society of children, I would want to know the author has done the work of raising kids, instead of studying documents of others who studied kids on a makeshift and very temporary basis. There's a great deal of difference between this "pop" psychology writer Hulbert and people who study children, like children, and look for what is good and workable. As I read this book, I kept thinking, how simple it is to write a book about what is wrong, and this is something Hulbert specializes in- according to her, lots of bad ideas exist in the world. This becomes tiresome throughout this book. In a world of cheap pundits everywhere, claiming that everything about everything is wrong, it is refreshing to read instead people like Derrida "the Work of Mourning" which speaks clearly about relationships and how they are made in individual psyches. I think overall, there is so much to be said about kids and relationships between them and with adults that is useful, that this book is unfortunately just is a rehash of each decades "look how bad and stupid people are after all" genre.