Review: The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a bit of density by one of our all time favorites on childhood development at UC Berkeley. Gopnik (yes, she's the sister of the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik ... overachieving sibs ? :-). I loved this work, it's packed with information and research, with one of the most insightful historical underpinnings of "parenting" I've ever read. I'm partial to any writer/researcher giving historical/cultural/context to data, which she does in spades. Is she a bit dogmatic? Hmmm, kinda yes. But do I mind? Not. Because she owns it and has ample data to buttress her arguments, not to mention that as an educator, she's in the pocket of persuasion all the time, and I think it's hard for her to "switch it off," so to speak. She distinguishes between something seminal: the two fundamental differences in child rearing--technician and nurturer (my terms, not hers). It's must reading for every parent, though because it's dense and not a quick or easy read, I doubt most parents will read it, but really, you can't do better than this beauty.

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