The gardener and the carpenter

Beschrijving

Zorgen voor kinderen, is iets anders dan kinderen opvoeden. Aan de hand van de metaforen ‘ouderen’ als timmerman of ‘ouderen’ als tuinman, verkent ontwikkelingspsycholoog en filosoof Alison Gopnik de contouren van het hedendaagse concept ‘parenting’ en wat dit betekent voor de relatie tussen ouders en kinderen.

Dit boek is niet meer leverbaar, wel als e-book te kopen.

In this book the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar twenty-first-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong–it’s not just based on bad science, it’s bad for kids and parents, too. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult.

Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. “Parenting” won’t make children learn―but caring parents let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment.

Review The Guardian – Modern parenting is all wrong

Luister hier naar een lezing van Alison Gopnik

The Gardener and the Carpenter
Alison Gopnik
Uitgeverij Farrar, Straus an Giroux, 320 pagina’s