Concerning children vs Handbook of Parenting

Concerning children

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jon A. Lindseth Suffrage Collection, Rationalist Press Association

1900

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Concerning Children reflects her innovative thinking on the social and economic construction of motherhood. In this volume, she takes on American society at its core principles: the betterment of our society through the development of our children. Gilman attacks our conventional model of child rearing, one based on obedience and discipline, rather than on the development of creativity and individuality. She responds to popular practices such as the corporal punishment of children, and proposes new and radical ways of child-rearing including social motherhood, which frees women to pursue careers. Presciently observing more than a century ago that it takes an entire village to raise a child, Gilman's Concerning Children is a must-read for anyone interested in gender and family studies.

Handbook of Parenting

Marc H. Bornstein

1995

This highly anticipated third edition of the Handbook of Parentingbrings together an array of field-leading experts who have worked in different ways toward understanding the many diverse aspects of parenting. Contributors to the Handbooklook to the most recent research and thinking to shed light on topics every parent, professional, and policymaker wonders about. Parenting is a perennially "hot" topic. After all, everyone who has ever lived has been parented, and the vast majority of people become parents themselves. No wonder bookstores house shelves of "how-to" parenting books and magazine racks in pharmacies and airports overflow with periodicals that feature parenting advice. However, almost none of these is evidence-based. The Handbook of Parentingis. Period. Each chapter has been written to be read and absorbed in a single sitting, and includes historical considerations of the topic, a discussion of central issues and theory, a review of classical and modern research, and forecasts of future directions of theory and research. Together, the five volumes in the Handbookcover Children and Parenting, the Biology and Ecology of Parenting, Being and Becoming a Parent, Social Conditions and Applied Parenting, and the Practice of Parenting. Volume 1, Children and Parenting,considers parenthood as a functional status in the life cycle: Parents protect, nurture, and teach their progeny, even if human development is more dynamic than can be determined by parental caregiving alone. Volume 1 of the Handbook of Parentingbegins with chapters concerned with how children influence parenting. Notable are their more obvious characteristics, like child age or developmental stage; but subtler ones, like child gender, physical state, temperament, mental ability, and other individual-differences factors, are also instrumental. The chapters in Part I, on Parenting across the Lifespan, discuss the unique rewards and special demands of parenting children of different ages and stages -