Recommended as an alternative perspective on an often emotionally fraught discussion.
Journalist Sandler (Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, 2006), an only child and mother of one, examines research, literature and anecdotal accounts on “singletons” who have been maligned as lonelier, less social and more troubled than peers raised with siblings.
The author also surveys attitudes toward parents of such children, who were often thought to be wealthier and more selfish. Through articles in popular magazines, current views in psychology, personal observations, interpretations of biographies on famous political and cultural figures, interviews, an 1895 study by Granville Stanley Hall, Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children, and other sources, Sandler discovered little evidence supporting the pervasive, negative perception of only children. She also found that contradicting studies, which revealed only children to be more successful, with higher self-esteem and better self-adjustment, remained largely unnoticed. The most intriguing section of the book features research on children born in China’s one-child–policy environment; less compelling chapters consider family size from demographic and economic perspectives, both in Europe and the U.S., with the expected conclusion that few, if any, adults base their consideration of whether or not to have additional children on larger trends. The author's take on this controversial subject, which emphasizes the positives of raising one child, may be misread as an attempt to justify her lifestyle, but she does not criticize those who do choose larger families (some of whom she explores in a chapter on Christian evangelicals). Sandler also carefully notes her own occasional ambivalence. Though it’s not likely to sway those readers who believe strongly in having multiple children, the author’s argument dispels stereotypes of "onlies" and raises provocative questions about the American tendency toward prioritizing and even elevating parenthood over relationships, individuality, social networks and other aspects of adulthood, sometimes to the detriment of the family.
Recommended as an alternative perspective on an often emotionally fraught discussion.Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2695-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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