The Gardener and the Carpenter shatters the myth of “good parenting” and illuminates the paradoxes of parenthood from a scientific perspective.
In the past thirty years, parenting has transformed into an obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and adult. However, in The Gardener and the Carpenter, pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that this familiar twenty-first-century picture of parenting is profoundly wrong - and it’s not just based on bad science, it’s bad for kids and parents, too.
Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of molding 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. This book illuminates the science behind child development and offers a fresh perspective on parenting in the modern age.