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DO PARENTS MATTER?

Robert A. LeVine Sarah LeVine

Why Japanese Babies Sleep Well, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Parents Should Just Relax

In some parts of northwestern Nigeria, mothers studiously avoid making eye contact with their babies. Some Chinese parents go out of their way to seek confrontation with their toddlers. Japanese parents almost universally co-sleep with their infants, sometimes continuing to share a bed with them until age ten. There are many differences here yet all these parents are as likely to have loving relationships with happy children. It's not necessarily the case that some cultures have discovered the keys to understanding children - it might be more appropriate to say there are no keys—but some parents are driving themselves crazy trying to find them. When we're immersed in news articles and scientific findings proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, we often miss the bigger picture: that parents can only affect their children so much.

Robert and Sarah LeVine, married anthropologists at Harvard University, have spent their lives researching parenting across the globe—starting with a trip to visit the Hausa people of Nigeria as newlyweds in 1969. Their decades of original research provide a new window onto the challenges of parenting and the ways that it is shaped by economic, cultural, and familial traditions. Their ability to put our modern struggles into global and historical perspective should calm many a nervous mother or father's nerves.

Robert LeVine is the Roy E. Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In 2001 he received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research from the American Educational Research Association.

Sarah LeVine is an anthropologist who has conducted research on four continents and coordinated the fieldwork of the Project on Maternal Schooling.
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Published 2016-09-01 by PublicAffairs

Comments

Parenting experts beware: the anthropologists are coming! Robert A. and Sarah LeVine discover fascinating lessons on child-rearing, from the Japanese to the Gusii.—Pamela Druckerman

Readers will find the variety fascinating, whether or not they're inspired to discard their cribs and nappies.

A fun, interesting, and detailed read.

The LeVines have created a valuable book for parents. By exposing them to the practices and goals of parents and cultures around the world, they offer parents in the United States ideas for their own goals, and for how to react as pressures on parents increase in our country. It is particularly important for parents to rethink their roles, rather than continue the present hovering, to one that may produce children who learn from the first how to face the inevitable stresses of development with more self-confidence. —T. Berry Brazelton

An intriguing assessment of the effectiveness of a variety of global parenting customs.

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

UK: Souvenir Press;