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."

Author: Ann Hulbert
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 04/13/2004
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.22w x 0.97d
ISBN: 9780375701221

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 04/25/2004 pg. 24

About the Author
Ann Hulbert is the author of The Interior Castle: The Art and Life of Jean Stafford. Her articles and reviews have appeared in many places, including the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, and The New Republic, where she worked for many years as a senior editor. She graduated from Harvard and spent a year at Cambridge University. She lives with her husband and two children in Washington, D.C.