Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children

by Meredith Small

To what extent do our parenting practices help or hinder our children? As parents, how much influence do we have over what kind of people our children will grow up to be? In the follow-up to her critically acclaimed Our Babies, Ourselves , Cornell anthropologist Meredith Small now takes on these and other crucial questions about the development of preschool children aged one to six.

While Our Babies, Ourselves explored the physical and cultural preconceptions behind child-rearing and offered new clues to parenting practices that might be detrimental to a baby's best interest, Kids delves even deeper. Unraveling the deep-seated notions prescribed in most parenting books, Kids combines the latest scientific research on human evolution and biology with Small's own keen observations of various cultures for a lively, eye-opening view of early childhood in America. Small not only reveals how children in this age group socialize and absorb the rules that underlie the societies they live in; she also explains the extent to which parents enhance or hold back the emotional and psychological growth of their kids.

In her engaging style, Small blends memorable accounts from her own experiences raising a preschooler with fascinating findings from her pioneering cross-cultural research, which spanned the country as well as the globe. Covering myriad aspects of the miraculous process of human growth, Small breaks new ground on topics such as why childhood is the optimum time for acquiring language skills; how children absorb knowledge and learn to solve problems; how empathy, and morality in general, make their way into a child's psyche; and the ways in which gender impacts identity. Underlying each chapter is an illuminating discussion of how the roles parents assign children in America shape the self-esteem and self-image of a future generation.
Rich with vivid anecdotes and profound insight, Kids will cause readers to rethink their own parenting styles, along with every age-old assumption about how to raise a happy, healthy kid.

Genres: Parenting, Anthropology, Childrens, Nonfiction, Cultural, Science

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Meredith F. Small is a science journalist, anthropologist, professor emerita Cornell University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. Although well known for her award winning magazine writing, she is also the author of several trade books that take an anthropological look at parenting, sexuality, and mental illness. Her book Our Babies, Ourselves has been called a "cult classic" for parents, health professionals, and anyone interested in parenting styles. Meredith's latest book is"Inventing the World; Venice and the Transformation of Western Culture" ( Pegasus Books) is about a list of over 200 inventions and creative ideas that originated in Venice and how they affected our modern view.

Reviews

[Shiloh · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a parent in America I sometimes feel like I'm part of some suspicious cult. I have to give up my lifestyle, adhere to a dogma that goes unquestioned among its followers and live in a compound away from the rest of society. This book raises questions about our beliefs regarding childhood. It uses comparative anthropology to show that these beliefs are recent in a social, economic and biological sense. So if you've been downright confused and displaced as a parent, this book is like a little "so there."

[sleeps9hours · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not as good as Our babies, Ourselves.

[Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that explores what it means to grow up in the US vs other cultures. compares roles of children, speech, knowledge, abuse



Most of the information was what I have generally heard over the years, but she quotes many studies and includes great detail and comparisons.

the best chapter and what made this book worth the read is the last chapter "childhood's end".



"We in western culture treat our children how we'd like them to become, not how they are."

Anthropologist James McKenna

well stated and I wish we would open our eyes to this and let our kids be who they are and do what they want. We try so hard to control them and fit them in our lives. It is really our privlidge to have kids in our lives. They serve as a mirror to us to see who we are and hopefully help us to grow into conscious parents and humans





This quote is a motivation for me to get involved now to help change the future for children and the planet—

"But one external factor that seems to be critical for developing a sense of resilience - having a responsive caretaker early in life. Even kids who grew up under the worst conditions were able to deal with life in a positive way if they had at least one caretaker who paid attention to their needs and feelings and responded to their needs and feelings and responded to their pain. thus build a sense of self worth."

Egeland, Carlson, et al. 1993

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this and Small's other book, Our Babies Ourselves, in the same year, and I have the exact same problem with both of them. This problem is crystalized in this quote Small uses in the last (and worst) chapter in Kids:

"We in western culture treat our children how we'd like them to become, not how they are."

Meredith, THAT'S THE PREMISE OF YOUR DAMN BOOK. It's right there in the subhead. That's how cultures work. You can't simultaneously be an anthropologist (trained to be objective) and then also whine that the adaptations in "Western" culture aren't valid.

I sympathize with a lot of the things Small complains about in the last chapter of the book, but as a reader with a degree in Anthropology myself, I am incredibly frustrated at the way she allowed herself to drift into subjective opinions at the end of both this book and of Our Babies, Ourselves.

My advice? Read the first seven chapters, then put the book away. The last two chapters are more opinion than fact, and she should have known better than to publish them as if they were anything else.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm... well, the thought was good, but I could not make it through this book. The premise is that we often (in "the West") think that there is only one way to raise children, and we are blind to the flexibility and differences other cultures offer. This book shows us the variety of ways children can be raised successfully to function within their culture. I find I am tired of reading that if I just was more like the whoevers my child would always do what I asked and help me clean the house. It does open your eyes to the fact that they very things that drive us nuts on occasion are actually things we, as a culture, value: being verbal, being independant etc.

Also a little heavy on the evolutionary biology angle. I loved her book Ourbabies OUrselves, but then I read it before I had a baby!

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a quick overview of a lot of sociology and ethnography, and it was a bit dry in the beginning, but I did really enjoy it for shining a light parenting in the US. We assume we are doing the best, but we are doing what we are doing for a lot of complex reasons. On the one hand, our kids do have to grow up in our culture so we should give some deference to cultural cues of how we raise our kids. But we can at least look critically at a lot of the mainstream ideas of childhood, because some of the reasons we do things aren't necessarily still good reasons. Maybe they are outdated or don't work for our kids. Like schooling and daycare: for some families they work, but for other families the alternatives are good ones (homeschooling, more parent and children interaction time, fewer institutions involved in childhood).

[Anastasia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me a lot to think about, but it was not as strong as the book that preceded it "Our Babies, Ourselves". It seemed that this time, Dr. Small had fewer concrete comparisons, or perhaps fewer strong arguments. However, throughout the course of the book, she is persuasive at getting the reader to think about differences in child rearing based upon culture, but also based upon Westernization, class, and values.

What I took from this book is that it would probably benefit my son to have a lot of intergenerational exposure, including the ability to learn from and play with children of various ages; and it would beenfit him to learn life skills and participate in responsibilities around the home rather than just learn academics and play.

[Jemma Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddly, I didn't think that this book was very well written. There were many sections that were just clunky and I had to overlook the writing in order to focus on the facts. The subject matter itself was quite compelling and I had been searching for a book that said something like this for a while. When you is deep in early parenthood some many people offer advice or suggest books that essentially make you feel inadequate. It's not that this book is feel-good or anything like that, but it does offer the reader a much broader range of normal and a cross-cultural sense that really, your kids are going to be ok.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently reread this. Still good. I found it less helpful for making decisions in my own parenting as Babies was (or rather less confirming) but still very helpful in perspective. Some of my favorite parts: perspectives on the institution of schooling, boys vs girls, "socialization" and the wide variety of attitudes towards this, the concept of children being economic assets (along the lines of the impact of marriage on partnerships, not slavery).

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not nearly as much fun as her book about babies, and far too few examples from other countries. But, I learned a few useful things (like how parents approach discipline) and considered reading some of the other books that were recommended because of this one.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, brilliant insight on cultural parenting behaviour.

[Kris]

I just started this - if it's as good as her other books, it ought to be amazing!

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

649.1 SMA

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I use this book in my child development class.

[Callie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and a quick read. A bit heavy on the evolution side.

[Heather]

Very interesting cross-cultural parenting insights.