RAISING CHILDREN IN MODERN AMERICA: Problems and Prospective Solutions

Three years ago a group of Harvard scholars organized, under Talbot's direction, a seminar on Child Rearing in Modern America which resulted in these 27 papers, each representing a particular discipline--psychology and sociology, child development, economics, business, government, ethics, the law, medicine, psychiatry, education and the humanities. It is a scholarly work, written by and for the experts, often in academese. The focus seems to be on what's gone wrong with the family and its primary function--the raising of healthy children. The topics include the need for more sex education (especially among the young and the poor), the moral development of children, their requirements from birth to young adulthood, and the not-so-new notion of educating young people for self-fulfilling work, primarily in service to the community. The papers are overstuffed with details and seem as familiar as the problems--delinquency, drugs, alienation from work, etc. They also deal with various injurious influences (very few of the writers seem to think that anything is wrong with the political system) from schools to TV programming. In concluding what seems to be a work of exclusive professional interest, there is an appeal for federally funded remedial programs--which now seem particularly unlikely.