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Do Parents Matter?
- Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's summary
When it comes to parenting, more isn't always better - but it is always more tiring.
In Japan, a boy sleeps in his parents' bed until age 10, but still shows independence in all other areas of his life. In rural India, toilet training begins one month after infants are born and is accomplished with little fanfare. In Paris, parents limit the amount of agency they give their toddlers. In America, parents grant them ever more choices, independence, and attention.
Given our approach to parenting, is it any surprise that American parents are too frequently exhausted? Over the course of nearly 50 years, Robert and Sarah LeVine have conducted a groundbreaking, worldwide study of how families work. They have consistently found that children can be happy and healthy in a wide variety of conditions, not just the effort-intensive, cautious environment so many American parents drive themselves crazy trying to create.
While there is always another news article or scientific fad proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, it's easy to miss the bigger picture: That children are smarter, more resilient, and more independent than we give them credit for.
Do Parents Matter? is an eye-opening look at the world of human nurture, one with profound lessons for the way we think about our families.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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"From birth onward, humans distinguish themselves as Earth's most adaptable mammal. Robert A. and Sarah LeVine combine decades of observation with absorbing storytelling to reveal the near-infinite variation of paths to a healthy adulthood. Do Parents Matter? is a must-read for students of human development and concerned parents alike." (Sam Wang, Professor of Neuroscience, Princeton University, and coauthor, Welcome to Your Child's Brain)
"It took two accomplished (and married) anthropologists, Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine, to synthesize years of research spanning the globe, then ask the basic question in the title of their new book: Do Parents Matter?...a well-informed argument." (Dan Saltzstein, New York Times Book Review)
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Read by a computer
- By Megan Ormston on 11-14-18
By: Dr. Jane Scott, and others
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The Attachment Effect
- Exploring the Powerful Ways Our Earliest Bond Shapes Our Relationships and Lives
- By: Peter Lovenheim
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Attachment theory is having a moment. Recently covered in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, and elsewhere, it's also the subject of popular relationship guides. Why is this 60-year-old theory, widely accepted in psychological circles, suddenly in vogue? Because people are discovering how powerfully it sheds light on who we love - and how. Fascinated by the subject, award-winning journalist and author Peter Lovenheim went on a years-long journey to understand it from the inside out.
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Failed to Attach
- By Danielle SeCheverell on 07-21-20
By: Peter Lovenheim
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Forget "Having It All"
- How America Messed Up Motherhood - and How to Fix It
- By: Amy Westervelt
- Narrated by: Amy Westervelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In Forget "Having It All", Westervelt traces the roots of our modern expectations of mothers and motherhood back to extremist ideas held by the first Puritans who attempted to colonize America and examines how those ideals shifted - or didn't - through every generation since.
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A Thorough and Well-Researched Book on The "Mom Predicament"
- By Merle B on 04-10-19
By: Amy Westervelt
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Push Back
- Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting
- By: Amy Tuteur
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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A Harvard-trained obstetrician-gynecologist, a prominent blogger, and author of the classic How Your Baby Is Born delivers a timely, important, and sure to be headline-making exposé that shines a light on the natural parenting movement and the multimillion-dollar industry behind it.
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A perspective all birth workers should examine
- By HeatherW on 10-25-19
By: Amy Tuteur
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Back to Normal
- Why Ordinary Childhood Behavior Is Mistaken for ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder
- By: Enrico Gnaulati
- Narrated by: Matthew Kugler
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A veteran clinical psychologist exposes why doctors, teachers, and parents incorrectly diagnose healthy American children with serious psychiatric conditions. In recent years there has been an alarming rise in the number of American children and youth assigned a mental health diagnosis. Current data from the Centers for Disease Control reveal a 41 percent increase in rates of ADHD diagnoses over the past decade and a forty-fold spike in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Similarly, diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder has increased by 78 percent since 2002.
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surprisingly useful and specific
- By SaturdayDad on 03-07-14
By: Enrico Gnaulati
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One and Only
- The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One
- By: Lauren Sandler
- Narrated by: Lauren Sandler
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Lauren Sandler is an only child and the mother of one. After investigating what only children are really like and whether stopping at one child is an answer to reconciling motherhood and modernity, she learned a lot about herself - and a lot about our culture's assumptions. In this heartfelt work, Sandler legitimizes a discussion about the larger societal costs of having more than one.
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Data Driven
- By Meghan B on 01-11-22
By: Lauren Sandler
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Unnatural Selection
- Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men
- By: Mara Hvistendahl
- Narrated by: Tamara Marston
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in 10 years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have 24 million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. And gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia....
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Interesting idea but...
- By Seth P Dow on 07-30-15
By: Mara Hvistendahl
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The War Against Boys
- How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men
- By: Christina Hoff Sommers
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An updated and revised edition of the controversial classic - now more relevant than ever - argues that boys are the ones languishing socially and academically, resulting in staggering social and economic costs. After two major waves of feminism and decades of policy reform, women have made massive strides in education. Today they outperform men in nearly every measure of social, academic, and vocational well-being. Christina Hoff Sommers contends that it's time to take a hard look at present-day realities and recognize that boys need help.
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Important Book
- By VeritasPlz on 11-05-18
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Teach Your Children Well
- Parenting for Authentic Success
- By: Madeline Levine PhD
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Parents, educators, and the media wring their hands about the plight of America's children and teens - soaring rates of emotional problems, limited coping skills, disengagement from learning - and yet there are ways to reverse these disheartening trends. Teach Your Children Well acknowledges that every parent wants successful children. However, until we are clearer about our core values and the parenting choices that are most likely to lead to authentic, and not superficial, success, we will continue to raise exhausted, externally driven, impaired children.
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I wish this book had been published years ago
- By AvidReader on 09-07-12
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One Child
- The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
- By: Mei Fong
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birthrates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society.
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Best Book Club Discussion Ever!!
- By Rachael W. Schettenhelm on 05-01-17
By: Mei Fong
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The New Strong-Willed Child
- By: James C. Dobson
- Narrated by: John Fuller
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. James Dobson has completely rewritten, updated, and expanded his classic best seller The Strong-Willed Child for a new generation of parents and teachers. The New Strong-Willed Child follows on the heels of Dr. Dobson's phenomenal best seller Bringing Up Boys. It offers practical how-to advice on raising difficult-to-handle children and incorporates the latest research with Dr. Dobson's legendary wit and wisdom.
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Answer to my prayers!
- By JG on 03-04-16
By: James C. Dobson
What listeners say about Do Parents Matter?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Rasmus Bonnevie
- 12-18-20
I keep recommending this
I found this to be a fantastic read/listen - great enough that I find myself bringing up fun passages in conversation and recommending it left and right to both parents and non-parents.
It's not that this is a masterpiece, but it works well and gives a rare perspective on parenting across different cultures. It should also be remarked that this is not a guide to good parenting or a deep examination of individual cultures, but rather an investigation into the diversity of cultural practices and the history of why we think about parenting the way we do in the west.
The narrator also does a great job. Popular science books are not quite pageturners, but the narrator keeps you invested and paces it well.
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- Amazon Costomer
- 05-13-20
Doesn’t deliver what it promises
The book didn’t deliver on what the title and description claim. I still don’t know the actual answer to any of these questions after listening. Very poorly backed up assertions not based on decent science but the author’s guess. Much of it just describing time in Africa without substance. Poorly researched and a failing grade on describing why different cultural practices lead to certain outcomes.
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-03-23
I'm glad this book was short
This book was the right length for what it is. Any longer and I would have stopped before the end, but it is nicely concise considering the vast content it covers.
In its favor, accompanied with the knowledge I've gained from reading a dozen other modern parenting books, it makes a good case for the idea that there are many ways to parent, many different skills you may want to prioritize as a parent, and many opportunities to change what you're teaching. Or, as "Mother Brain" says, there are many biological redundancies for children to get what they need. This messaging does provide an important opposing view to the parenting books of the early 2000s that seem prescriptive and judgy.
Also to its credit, this book is an interesting anthropological look at parenting on a global scale. It encourages a neutral and nonjudgmental look at many methods of parenting, emphasizing the values children are taught in the society they live in.
The entire book gives examples about how parenting tactics in particular societies result in specific character traits in kids in those societies and how those tactics and traits get carried on from generation to generation. These authors would have done better to leave it at that rather than to draw their own conclusions about what that means.
In the end, the authors somehow conclude that we don't know if parenting really matters. Their conclusions come across much the same way as older generations saying "we didn't worry about lead paint and we're fine" and "we have asbestos in our house and it's never been a problem."
Also to its detriment, they make several broad sweeping and unsubstantiated claims about the field of psychology.
In summary, this is definitely not a book I would recommend. It could just as easily be used to justify really careless or even detrimental parenting as it could be to help an intense parent just relax a little.
If you want a better book to encourage less intense or less fearful parenting, try "Good Inside." This book also mentions "Bringing Up Bebe" by Pamela Druckerman which is a decent read as well.
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