Rating: 
Summary: Read this before any other parenting book!
Review: I agree this is one of the best gifts to a first time mom. I wish I would have read this book before my first child was born. It read more like a science book and not a "how to" type book. I just wish there was a second volume for toddlers!
Rating:
Summary: an excellent and thought provoking book
Review: As a first time parent I was unsure about how to handle all the millions of decisions regarding care of my baby and was confused and frustrated by conflicting advice and opinions. This book put things into a larger context and gave some insight on why we tend to emphasize certain things in our culture. It opened up other ways of thinking about parenting and helped me gain self confidence. It demonstrated that much of the "conventional wisdom" is often based on cultural or personal opinions, but not on science or infant biology. An excellent thought provoking book about what we value as a culture and how this translates into our parenting.
Rating:
Summary: The best!
Review: What a wonderful book! This is an excellent piece of work covering the new field, ethnopediatrics, which is something that it's about time Western culture had its eyes opened up to. I've always known something was wrong with many of our child care issues, and now I know that I'm right. Please, do our society a favor and read this book, buy it for expecting parents, and tell everyone you know about it. There are things in this book concerning our babies' health that need to be told.
Rating:
Summary: excellent overview of the influences of culture in parenting
Review: This is an easily read and fascinating book. It points out the influence of American values to raise independent and self reliant children. These values lead to parenting practices which do not take into account the biology of infants. She gives an excellent overview of current scientific studies of infants behavior as it relates to cry and sleep..I would recommend this book to anyone who is considering parenthood.
Rating:
Summary: This book was vital to my learning to parent my two-week old
Review: I received this book as a baby present when Tristan was ten days old. It gave me important new ways to think about interacting with Tristan, and I'm firmly convinced that it transformed our experience into one far richer and more positive. I read the book in gulps whenever I had a chance, and allowed it to completely change my world view about child raising. I feel that it has played a key role in getting me off on the right start. I wish I'd spent more time during my pregnancy reading books like this, and less time worrying about what Baby Things I'd purchased.
Rating:
Summary: Insights on Parenting Beyond Generic Baby Care Books
Review: A MUST READ for any parent. By the time you've read about the basics of tending to your newborn's physical needs, such as how to take his or her temperature, how to diaper and swaddle, etc., you'll probably be receiving advice from various friends and family members about the best way to feed your baby, how to deal with colic, where your baby should sleep and a million other parenting issues. Before you blindly follow the advice of others on these and other parenting matters, read this book and get a broader insight on why we do the things we do as parents. As a new mother, I read lots of baby care books and was left wondering whether I was getting the whole picture. I wasn't. This book picks up where other generic baby care books leave off and challenges you to consider the best way to parent your baby.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent multicultural view of caring for babies.
Review: This book provides a refreshing change from other baby care books that have a Western bias. It is good to see practices in different cultures mentioned in one book. For example, I was surprised by the speed with which some cultures in Africa respond to a crying baby.We are also reminded that people are animals, too; this book points out some biological aspects of raising babies and how these are sometimes at odds with some practices in Western culture. Read this book with an open mind. If you firmly believe that the Western approach to raising babies is the One True way, this book is not for you.
Rating:
Summary: More support for attachment-style parenting
Review: The trend towards "hands off" parenting, with bottles, baby monitors, strollers and baby seats, and sleeping alone robs the infant of the touch and assurances of love and protection we all need for a basic emotional health. Our people are angry, frazzled, anxious, and live with a constant feeling that something is missing. Giving our babies what they need would be a big step towards a healthier society.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for anyone interested in children.
Review: I bought this book immediately after hearing an interviw with Dr. Small on National Public Radio. I was very impressed with the fact that she did not try to tell anyone how to raise their child, simply what other cultures do and why. Obviously something done to socialize a child for one particular culture might or might not be appropriate in your culture. It did leave me with the question, what culture did I grow up in? Even though I grew up in the US, I found I drew instinctively from the practices of many other parts of the world. This book helped confirm my belief that by respecting what my child tells me he needs, while keeping in mind that my job is to teach him about the world, we can strike a balance that allows him the security he needs while he is learning to live in this society. I still don't know what culture I grew up in, but at least I know a lot of what I felt was different about how we raise our child is standard practice in most of the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Some interest, but misleading, biased, and repetitive, too
Review: Small has some interesting bits of info about lots of different cultures. However, while one of her central purposes claims to be to show that cultures are different, therefore no one way of childrearing is superior to all the others, she clearly believes that the San (bushmen) style of childrearing is biologically correct and best. I find it aggravating, also, that though she claims "traditional" societies are as different from one another as are "modern" ones, she is content to use studies of the San in the 20th century as proof of how all early humans cared for their babies. One can also see from her own evidence that much of the reason people in "traditional" cultures slept with the baby or carried the baby was for the baby's physical safety, a concern that is far less pressing in our world. Another very annoying thing she does is present endless "facts" about babies in different cultures without judging the quality of the studies that gleaned those "facts." Were the "facts" learned from a controlled, five year study of 1,000 babies, or were they determined from 15 women observed in a lab for 2 hours? In general, the reader can't tell from Small's account.
| 
