Intriguing and fact-filled study of the history and future of parenting.
A unique approach to gender and parenting roles uses scientific studies to evaluate the value of the mother as primary caregiver.
The price women pay and the sacrifices they make by assuming (and continuing to assume) the role of primary parent is too high, says Carlsson, who takes a fresh look at male and female gender issues by studying the corresponding dependence women incur when acting as primary parent. Women’s role as the primary caregiver has been questioned before, but here the author takes a deeper look into the issue by asking whether both mother and child might benefit more by stepping out of this construct. Carlsson uses numerous scientific studies to illustrate how, by acting as primary parent, women are hindered in their personal and professional growth. She argues this most forcefully with references to evolution and the comparison of animal behaviors to those of humans. Using numerous case studies, Carlsson evaluates men, their past traditional and more modern roles in childcare and its effect on women, children and the family as a whole. One question she addresses is whether men and women think differently or are simply trained differently. Although the author maintains that the debate over nature vs. nurture remains open, she uses numerous resources to argue that child, mother and family as a whole are hurt by gender-based parenting roles. Animal behaviors, and the subsequent evolutionary roles women have assumed, are the core of the discussion here against women as primary parent. As long as they are so, Carlsson says, they remain dependent on the male benefactor. With the dissolution of the primary-vs.-secondary standard, evolution will continue and thus eliminate this gender-based infraction against women’s independence and growth.
Intriguing and fact-filled study of the history and future of parenting.Pub Date: March 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-978-7388-6176-0
Page Count: 170
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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