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Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, millions of anxious parents have turned to child-rearing manuals for reassurance. Instead, however, they have often found yet more cause for worry. In this rich social history, Ann Hulbert analyzes one hundred years of shifting trends in advice and discovers an ongoing battle between two main approaches: a “child-centered” focus on warmly encouraging development versus a sterner “parent-centered” emphasis on instilling discipline. She examines how pediatrics, psychology, and neuroscience have fueled the debates but failed to offer definitive answers. And she delves into the highly relevant and often turbulent personal lives of the popular advice-givers, from L. Emmett Holt and Arnold Gesell to Bruno Bettelheim and Benjamin Spock to the prominent (and ever conflicting) experts of today.
464 pages, Paperback
First published April 29, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 3, 2021
Page 61 (my book)
As the century turned [to the 20th century], about whether children – and their mothers – needed new stability or new flexibility; more order or more room for spontaneity; greater protection from an urbanized and mechanized world or more preparation for it. Should adults be striving for more intimacy or for more authority … in their parental control?
Page 100 Bird Stein Gans 1923
“What is the matter with our children today? What has come over them? Why are they so different from us? Why is it so difficult for them to do and think as we did and thought as children?”
The expression sounds better in French – “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing). The above quotes raised at the beginnings of the 1900s are still being said today. The 20th century was to be the “The Century of the Child”. There are still the issues of permissiveness versus discipline, child centered versus parent centered, problem child or problem parent, breast-feeding versus formula feeding, daycare versus homecare…
What has changed during the latter half of the 20th century is the vast plethora of how-to books and experts on child-care – likely there is a whole section in any bookstore. Parents today are inundated with a whole array of advisers.
Page 368 from the book “The Scientist in the Crib”
“We wish someone would tell us what to do, but on the other hand, we don’t want anybody telling us what to do.”
Page 314 Hilary Clinton
“Science, as we hear from the experts today, has now confirmed what many parents have instinctively known.”
This book is about the different trends of baby and child care that evolved since the 1880s and throughout the 20th century (this book was published in 2003). Pediatric care was recognized as a specialty in 1880 by the American Medical Association. It must be remembered that science during that era was seen as the new panacea that would bring a new and better age to mankind. So, it was felt that research into baby and child care would lead to better children and a better world. In many ways it did – the death-rate of newborns and children under five decreased substantially at the beginning of the 20th century. This resulted from the research that led to better and more hygienic nutritional practices for infants.
The author is at her best outlining the biographical lives of the prominent experts and physicians who rose to fame in the world of mothers – and to a lesser extent fathers. She describes their lives and upbringing (dominant mothers, authoritarian fathers, distant fathers…) plus the impact they had on child-rearing ranging from a scheduled infant to a more permissive environment. Some prescribed charts with schedules for recording feeding, sleeping, playtime, cuddling, pooping…of the babies… (who would have time for this, I thought!).
Even though some wanted a hard-line (a regimented schedule, no cuddling, limit play time and interaction) or a soft-line, their advice and books could be contradictory.
Baby care is not an exact science (like physics), results are never predictable and babies are not like regimented mice or rats in a lab.
Page 199
“This powerful tendency of wanting to be told an exact answer.”
Often the findings of pediatricians were based and influenced by their upbringing, a very small study sample, and the upper urban middle class white mothers and babies with whom they had access to.
Perhaps the most humane and less restrictive expert was Dr. Benjamin Spock. I still recall using and referring to his book when our young children were growing up. It was a reassuring book and loaded with anecdotes of a baby’s behaviour and suggestions to cope with it.
There were some important changes in the research on babies in the latter half of the 20th century. It was realized that a baby is interacting comprehensively with his/her environment. It is not merely the parents who are the causality of the baby’s upbringing, but the inner workings of the baby’s developing years. It has been found that in those first few months and years a baby has a stupendous array of mental and physical adaptations to progressively adjust into his or her environment.
Page 305-06 Eleanor E. Maccoby
“the competent and communicative subjects [babies] [are not] empty vessels to be filled… they are really primed to socialize adults or anybody else who comes near them, probably more effectively than the reverse.”
This book gives us many of the disparate conflicting views of bringing up baby that evolved – and have created endless anxieties for parents over the decades. This book is mostly on the first five years, but it does, from time to time go into the tempestuous adolescent phase. There were passages that were overly wordy and thick. The book should have been simplified and shortened.
Nevertheless, we are given a view of the experts – and how they have generated controversy – and more experts!
As the century turned [to the 20th century], about whether children – and their mothers – needed new stability or new flexibility; more order or more room for spontaneity; greater protection from an urbanized and mechanized world or more preparation for it. Should adults be striving for more intimacy or for more authority … in their parental control?
Page 100 Bird Stein Gans 1923
“What is the matter with our children today? What has come over them? Why are they so different from us? Why is it so difficult for them to do and think as we did and thought as children?”
The expression sounds better in French – “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” (the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing). The above quotes raised at the beginnings of the 1900s are still being said today. The 20th century was to be the “The Century of the Child”. There are still the issues of permissiveness versus discipline, child centered versus parent centered, problem child or problem parent, breast-feeding versus formula feeding, daycare versus homecare…
What has changed during the latter half of the 20th century is the vast plethora of how-to books and experts on child-care – likely there is a whole section in any bookstore. Parents today are inundated with a whole array of advisers.
Page 368 from the book “The Scientist in the Crib”
“We wish someone would tell us what to do, but on the other hand, we don’t want anybody telling us what to do.”
Page 314 Hilary Clinton
“Science, as we hear from the experts today, has now confirmed what many parents have instinctively known.”
This book is about the different trends of baby and child care that evolved since the 1880s and throughout the 20th century (this book was published in 2003). Pediatric care was recognized as a specialty in 1880 by the American Medical Association. It must be remembered that science during that era was seen as the new panacea that would bring a new and better age to mankind. So, it was felt that research into baby and child care would lead to better children and a better world. In many ways it did – the death-rate of newborns and children under five decreased substantially at the beginning of the 20th century. This resulted from the research that led to better and more hygienic nutritional practices for infants.
The author is at her best outlining the biographical lives of the prominent experts and physicians who rose to fame in the world of mothers – and to a lesser extent fathers. She describes their lives and upbringing (dominant mothers, authoritarian fathers, distant fathers…) plus the impact they had on child-rearing ranging from a scheduled infant to a more permissive environment. Some prescribed charts with schedules for recording feeding, sleeping, playtime, cuddling, pooping…of the babies… (who would have time for this, I thought!).
Even though some wanted a hard-line (a regimented schedule, no cuddling, limit play time and interaction) or a soft-line, their advice and books could be contradictory.
Baby care is not an exact science (like physics), results are never predictable and babies are not like regimented mice or rats in a lab.
Page 199
“This powerful tendency of wanting to be told an exact answer.”
Often the findings of pediatricians were based and influenced by their upbringing, a very small study sample, and the upper urban middle class white mothers and babies with whom they had access to.
Perhaps the most humane and less restrictive expert was Dr. Benjamin Spock. I still recall using and referring to his book when our young children were growing up. It was a reassuring book and loaded with anecdotes of a baby’s behaviour and suggestions to cope with it.
There were some important changes in the research on babies in the latter half of the 20th century. It was realized that a baby is interacting comprehensively with his/her environment. It is not merely the parents who are the causality of the baby’s upbringing, but the inner workings of the baby’s developing years. It has been found that in those first few months and years a baby has a stupendous array of mental and physical adaptations to progressively adjust into his or her environment.
Page 305-06 Eleanor E. Maccoby
“the competent and communicative subjects [babies] [are not] empty vessels to be filled… they are really primed to socialize adults or anybody else who comes near them, probably more effectively than the reverse.”
This book gives us many of the disparate conflicting views of bringing up baby that evolved – and have created endless anxieties for parents over the decades. This book is mostly on the first five years, but it does, from time to time go into the tempestuous adolescent phase. There were passages that were overly wordy and thick. The book should have been simplified and shortened.
Nevertheless, we are given a view of the experts – and how they have generated controversy – and more experts!
June 7, 2012
An extremely thorough look at the history of "scientific" child rearing and the famous experts who studied children and recommended the best ways to raise them. Hubert begins at the turn of the 20th century, and traces the various movements and trends in child-rearing wisdom, from behaviorism, to cognitive psychology. She also gives in-depth personal biographies of the most famous child-rearing scholars, men like Dr. Spock, who became household names through their bestselling parenting books. She catalogues the various scientific theories (Freudianism, Erikson's stages of development, Piaget's stages of intellectual development, behavioral genetics) and how those theories impacted the experts and the advice they gave.
This book is dense, thorough and critically thinks through an entire century of child-rearing advice. It is not a quick read, nor is it beach reading, but it is incredibly informative. It is also, deep down, somewhat reassuring for someone who has kids now or may choose to have kids in the future: the biographical sections reveal that even the experts had screwed up families. It also continually comes back to the idea that there is tons and tons of advice out there, but none of it yet has been proven to be any more or less effective, all it really does is stress out parents. The epilogue concludes that while scientific intervention into child-rearing has produced many beneficial advances (better milk formulas, better understanding of germs, lower infant/child mortality rate, safer pregnancies etc.) parents are still just as confused, lost and paralyzed when it comes to the complex, subtle and emotional decisions about how to tend to a child's emotional, intellectual and growing needs.
This book is dense, thorough and critically thinks through an entire century of child-rearing advice. It is not a quick read, nor is it beach reading, but it is incredibly informative. It is also, deep down, somewhat reassuring for someone who has kids now or may choose to have kids in the future: the biographical sections reveal that even the experts had screwed up families. It also continually comes back to the idea that there is tons and tons of advice out there, but none of it yet has been proven to be any more or less effective, all it really does is stress out parents. The epilogue concludes that while scientific intervention into child-rearing has produced many beneficial advances (better milk formulas, better understanding of germs, lower infant/child mortality rate, safer pregnancies etc.) parents are still just as confused, lost and paralyzed when it comes to the complex, subtle and emotional decisions about how to tend to a child's emotional, intellectual and growing needs.
April 4, 2009
Definitely not for the casual reader. A very in depth, very academic study of the science of child-rearing advice throughout the 20th and 21st century. It is interesting seeing how advice has changed ("Bananas are evil" - "You must guard vigilently against stimulating your baby" - "don't play with your baby") and how things have stayed the same ("we need a whole new way to raise children so they will be ready for the world of tomorrow" - "parents don't know anything - they must be taught how to raise children or civilization as we know it will end.")
August 9, 2013
While it can be pretty dry and a bit of a slog, the scholarship is staggering. Provides a solid history of so-called experts without taking any sides in the debate and comes to some rather comforting and constructive conclusions to my mind. A must read for any skeptical parent tired of the dogmatic declarations of the various expert's acolytes.
October 3, 2017
This was a pretty tedious read, due to the depth of biographical detail on each parenting expert, and the author's convoluted prose. Main takeaways for me:
American parents have always (at least, in the past century) been anxious - this is not a new phenomenon;
parenting advice is largely based on the experts' own upbringing rather than much hard data about what works;
no parenting philosophy out there matches any other parenting philosophy, so rather than try to find an expert whose philosophy matches yours, try reading advice by people you don't think you'll agree with, and you might find something that fits your family surprisingly well.
American parents have always (at least, in the past century) been anxious - this is not a new phenomenon;
parenting advice is largely based on the experts' own upbringing rather than much hard data about what works;
no parenting philosophy out there matches any other parenting philosophy, so rather than try to find an expert whose philosophy matches yours, try reading advice by people you don't think you'll agree with, and you might find something that fits your family surprisingly well.
June 27, 2019
Ann Hulbert chronicles how twentieth-century parenting experts in the United States have offered dramatically varied “dogmas and data,” reflecting “American confusions about children’s natures and futures, and about mothers’ missions.” The new plague of anxiety about child-rearing, it turns out, is actually as old as the plague itself: “pick any post-medieval century as it turns,” Hulbert writes, “and you can find historians proclaiming a notable shift in, and rising concern about, parent-child relations.” That’s comforting. So too is her conclusion that the experts “have fared no better or worse than the rest of us in the quest for calm consistency in child-rearing technique and theory.” And Raising America contains a good deal of interesting information and reflection. Yet Hulbert’s is a copiously researched historian’s history of the central dilemma (“is it more discipline or more bonding that they need at home?”) and as such, one I recommend only for those hoping to feel like a slogging college student again.
April 2, 2009
A very interesting look at the history of child development "experts" in the last century. There was a lot of biographical history in the middle that bogged me down, but in small doses, I found it enjoyable. I'd especially recommend the intro and epilogue for anyone that has found the masses of parenting books and philosophies overwhelming, contradictory, or simply ridiculous. Really, you can find a theory somewhere to fit anyone's idea of "perfect parenting" - so the bottom line (in my mind) is: do what's best for you. There.
February 25, 2011
I didn't finish it; I admit it. The subject was interesting, but the writing was too dry. If it had been more in the style of an Erik Larson or a Sebastian Junger book, I would have dug it. Write history books in a compelling way! Nobody wants to read a dissertation!
Want to read
November 26, 2007649.1 Hulbert 2003
Mentioned in Freakonomics
Mentioned in Freakonomics
February 28, 2013
A comprensive, biography-driven account of twentieth century childrearing advice, which will inoculate you against any childrearing advice.
June 3, 2018
Almost entirely anecdotal and may well have been made up from whole cloth, as there are no footnotes or even a bibliography to say otherwise.
June 18, 2019
This is a dense book, but packed with just the information I was looking for. After not finding something clear online as to the theories of child care in the 40s, I came across this book and it was perfect. I was intrigued enough to continue reading and quite enjoyed the sections related to Dr. Spock. I also like that the author showed similar patterns of child rearing repeating in each generation. There are usually co-existing theories that are more disciplinarian and more permissive, Parent-centered and Child-centered. Another strength of the book was the evaluation of the upbringing and then home life of each of the experts, so their view point could be put into context with the rest of their life.
At times the writing was very dense, so much so that it was hard to read. I found this particularly true toward the end, where I wasn't as clear on what the author's intentions were, other than to gather a bunch of information. Even so, I greatly appreciated the research that went into this tome and it gave me just the information I needed and then some.
At times the writing was very dense, so much so that it was hard to read. I found this particularly true toward the end, where I wasn't as clear on what the author's intentions were, other than to gather a bunch of information. Even so, I greatly appreciated the research that went into this tome and it gave me just the information I needed and then some.
November 13, 2014
I had to quit this book.
While I am sure that I would have gained some valuable knowledge if I had been able to soldier threw the dense language and TMI stories about the founders of modern thought regarding child rearing practices in America, I just could not.
This story is not nearly as interesting or attention-grabbing as the title suggests or even as the book reviews suggest.
As many others have said, this is not for the casual reader and even halfway into the book you have learned very little of substance regarding children in America and the adults that they become and how we got to our current way of thinking regarding the process of raising them up.
While I am sure that I would have gained some valuable knowledge if I had been able to soldier threw the dense language and TMI stories about the founders of modern thought regarding child rearing practices in America, I just could not.
This story is not nearly as interesting or attention-grabbing as the title suggests or even as the book reviews suggest.
As many others have said, this is not for the casual reader and even halfway into the book you have learned very little of substance regarding children in America and the adults that they become and how we got to our current way of thinking regarding the process of raising them up.
June 16, 2015
Fascinating look into how the image of parenting has changed over the last 100 years or so. This was a very detailed book that brought to life the issues throughout the 20th Century. A little slow in parts, so would only recommend for avid non-fiction readers.
I loved learning about Dr. Spock, he was so far ahead of his time. Parenting in America has always been controversial, and so it remains. This is a good reminder for all us parents to cut oursleves some slack!
I loved learning about Dr. Spock, he was so far ahead of his time. Parenting in America has always been controversial, and so it remains. This is a good reminder for all us parents to cut oursleves some slack!
August 9, 2016
A little disappointing. I wish there had been more actual analysis, especially of the earlier stuff, and comparison of how experts actually influenced parents behavior, and less delving into the various experts' respective childhoods. In the later chapters, things improved, but it makes the book very unbalanced.
June 16, 2009
"Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children by Ann Hulbert (2004)"
September 6, 2014
I liked it, but it was so wordy I only made it through 200 pages.
September 7, 2017
Read like a boring textbook. Was sadly disappointed and didn't finish.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews