How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm

Author: Mei-Ling Hopgood
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1616201207
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
"The book is breezy and entertaining and Hopgood is charmingly self-deprecating about her own mothering of the formidable Sofia, who emerges as a sassy character in her own right."—Boston Globe A tour of global practices that will inspire American parents to expand their horizons (and geographical borders) and learn that there’s more than one way to diaper a baby. Mei-Ling Hopgood, a first-time mom from suburban Michigan—now living in Buenos Aires—was shocked that Argentine parents allow their children to stay up until all hours of the night. Could there really be social and developmental advantages to this custom? Driven by a journalist’s curiosity and a new mother’s desperation for answers, Hopgood embarked on a journey to learn how other cultures approach the challenges all parents face: bedtimes, potty training, feeding, teaching, and more. Observing parents around the globe and interviewing anthropologists, educators, and child-care experts, she discovered a world of new ideas. The Chinese excel at potty training, teaching their wee ones as young as six months old. Kenyans wear their babies in colorful cloth slings—not only is it part of their cultural heritage, but strollers seem outright silly on Nairobi’s chaotic sidewalks. And the French are experts at turning their babies into healthy, adventurous eaters. Hopgood tested her discoveries on her spirited toddler, Sofia, with some enlightening results. This intimate and surprising look at the ways other cultures raise children offers parents the option of experimenting with tried and true methods from around the world and shows that there are many ways to be a good parent.

Parenting Without Borders

Author: Christine Gross-Loh Ph.D
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1583335471
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
An eye-opening guide to the world’s best parenting strategies Research reveals that American kids lag behind in academic achievement, happiness, and wellness. Christine Gross-Loh exposes culturally determined norms we have about “good parenting,” and asks, Are there parenting strategies other countries are getting right that we are not? This book takes us across the globe and examines how parents successfully foster resilience, creativity, independence, and academic excellence in their children. Illuminating the surprising ways in which culture shapes our parenting practices, Gross-Loh offers objective, research-based insight such as: Co-sleeping may promote independence in kids. “Hoverparenting” can damage a child’s resilience. Finnish children, who rank among the highest academic achievers, enjoy multiple recesses a day. Our obsession with self-esteem may limit a child’s potential.

Lucky Girl

Author: Mei-Ling Hopgood
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN: 1565129415
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
In a true story of family ties, journalist Mei-Ling Hopgood, one of the first wave of Asian adoptees to arrive in America, comes face to face with her past when her Chinese birth family suddenly requests a reunion after more than two decades.In 1974, a baby girl from Taiwan arrived in America, the newly adopted child of a loving couple in Michigan. Mei-Ling Hopgood had an all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry. She believed that she was lucky to have escaped a life that was surely one of poverty and misery, to grow up comfortable with her doting parents and brothers. Then, when she's in her twenties, her birth family comes calling. Not the rural peasants she expected, they are a boisterous, loving, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily by phone, fax, and letter, in a language she doesn't understand until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. As her sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. Spanning cultures and continents, "Lucky Girl" brings home a tale of joy and regret, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny.

One and Only

Author: Lauren Sandler
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451626967
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
The author discusses the pros and cons of being an only child.

Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love

Author: Lara Vapnyar
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030727988X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
Each of Lara Vapnyar's six stories invites us into a world where food and love intersect, along with the overlapping pleasures and frustrations of Vapnyar's uniquely captivating characters. Meet Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom colorful vegetables represent her own fresh hopes and dreams . . . Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs . . . and Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. They all crave the taste and smell of home, wherever—and with whomever—that may turn out to be. A roundup of recipes are the final taste of this delicious collection.

A Window Opens

Author: Elisabeth Egan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501105469
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Book Description
What happens when having it all proves too much to handle? In this “fresh, funny take on the age-old struggle to have it all” (People) a wife and mother of three leaps at the chance to fulfill her professional destiny—only to learn every opportunity comes at a price. “A winning, heartfelt debut” (Good Housekeeping), A Window Opens introduces Alice Pearse, a compulsively honest, longing-to-have-it-all, sandwich generation heroine for our social-media-obsessed, lean in (or opt out) age. Like her fictional forebears Kate Reddy and Bridget Jones, Alice plays many roles (which she never refers to as “wearing many hats” and wishes you wouldn’t, either). She is a (mostly) happily married mother of three, an attentive daughter, an ambivalent dog-owner, a part-time editor, a loyal neighbor and a Zen commuter. She is not: a cook, a craftswoman, a decorator, an active PTA member, a natural caretaker, or the breadwinner. But when her husband makes a radical career change, Alice is ready to lean in—and she knows exactly how lucky she is to land a job at Scroll, a hip young start-up which promises to be the future of reading. The Holy Grail of working mothers―an intellectually satisfying job and a happy personal life―seems suddenly within reach. Despite the disapproval of her best friend, who owns the local bookstore, Alice is proud of her new “balancing act” (which is more like a three-ring circus) until her dad gets sick, her marriage flounders, her babysitter gets fed up, her kids start to grow up, and her work takes an unexpected turn. In the midst of her second coming of age, Alice realizes the question is not whether it’s possible to have it all but, what does she really want the most? “Smart and entertaining…with refreshing straight-forwardness and humor” (The Washington Post), “fans of I Don’t Know How She Does It and Where’d You Go, Bernadette will adore A Window Opens” (Booklist, starred review).

Do Parents Matter?

Author: Robert A. LeVine
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 161039724X
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
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 ten, 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 fifty 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.

The Snow Baby

Author: Josephine Diebitsch Peary
Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
ISBN: 9781498178778
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 82

Book Description
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1901 Edition.

Achtung Baby

Author: Sara Zaske
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250160189
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
An Entertaining, Enlightening Look at the Art of Raising Self-Reliant, Independent Children Based on One American Mom’s Experiences in Germany An NPR "Staff Pick" and One of the NPR Book Concierge's"Best Books of the Year" When Sara Zaske moved from Oregon to Berlin with her husband and toddler, she knew the transition would be challenging, especially when she became pregnant with her second child. She was surprised to discover that German parents give their children a great deal of freedom—much more than Americans. In Berlin, kids walk to school by themselves, ride the subway alone, cut food with sharp knives, and even play with fire. German parents did not share her fears, and their children were thriving. Was she doing the opposite of what she intended, which was to raise capable children? Why was parenting culture so different in the States? Through her own family’s often funny experiences as well as interviews with other parents, teachers, and experts, Zaske shares the many unexpected parenting lessons she learned from living in Germany. Achtung Baby reveals that today's Germans know something that American parents don't (or have perhaps forgotten) about raising kids with “selbstandigkeit” (self-reliance), and provides practical examples American parents can use to give their own children the freedom they need to grow into responsible, independent adults.

Give Me Your Heart

Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547385463
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
A latest collection of macabre tales by the National Book Award-winning author of We Were the Mulvaneys includes "Strip Poker," in which a reckless adolescent girl turns the tables on a group of threatening men; and "Smother!," in which a woman's childhood memories threaten her professor mother.