A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.
Harlow’s second self-help guide, following Happily Divorced (2019), is for readers striving to co-parent well after separation.
This book offers a variety of suggestions for how to navigate the most difficult decisions regarding co-parenting. She wants parents to thrive in collaborative relationships rather than fight at every step—or just try to “get through” until the children are grown. She’s optimistic that, in most cases, improvement in co-parenting is possible. Harlow covers a wide range of relevant topics, starting with “uncoupling”: how couples might tell their kids about a decision to separate and how to address questions of custody, living arrangements, and potential reconciliations. She then introduces decisions that need to be made when first establishing a co-parenting plan, including elements that one might not consider immediately, such as arrangements involving pets, vacations, extracurricular activities. The author also tackles questions regarding money, new partners, and stepparenting. Harlow is consistent in her approach, often bringing her suggestions back to the golden Rule. She wants co-parents to be empathetic, intentional, and good communicators, even coining a new term that encompasses these states: matter-of-fact caring. The clearly organized structure of this book successfully presents the author’s advice in a logical order while also laying out personal experiences—such as finding a new home after a divorce, attending parent-teacher conferences, dealing with unexpected events, and more—as she tried to build a collaborative co-parenting framework with her ex-husband; at one point, her son writes one section about his parents’ relationship. However, what’s missing in this book is expert advice and cited evidence to back up Harlow’s advice and claims, particularly in sections such as discipline, in which insights from a child or family psychologist might have strengthened the author’s opinions. A few more anecdotes from other families would also have provided a more varied perspective.
A well-structured journey through the pitfalls of parenting kids collaboratively.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2021
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 119
Publisher: Promethean Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More-of-the-same sequel to last year's best-selling Motherless Daughters. In truth, this book is not quite the same. It contains more letters from motherless daughters but less of the research and thoughtful discussion that gave Edelman's earlier book a somewhat substantive underpinning. The book moves through stages of loss, starting with letters from teenagers who lost their mothers only a few months earlier and moving on to women whose mothers have been dead nearly 80 years. As Edelman relates it, one criticism leveled at the first book was that it tended to present women as victims. Not so, she retorts. These are ``survivors...who have experienced the most profound loss a child can imagine'' and choose to share their stories with others. Well, yes and no. As Edelman herself has pointed out, a daughter's view of her mother is muddled at best, a mix of fairy godmother and wicked stepmother. Moreover, a child's ability to heal following a mother's death seems tied to a number of factors, including, of course, the father's role and the opportunity to vent their feelings, including anger, guilt, sorrow, and fear. Many of the women whose letters are printed in this volume seem to have serious holes in that scenario, most often with fathers who enlisted them as housekeepers or little mothers of younger siblings, or who were simply too grief-stricken or confused to be a parent. Often, the correspondents complain that, without a mother, they have had no one to teach them social graces. Edelman concludes by encouraging support groups for motherless daughters. The value of these groups often lies in the relief of recognition that even at age 50, you are not the only one who wants to cry, ``Mommy, I'm scared.'' After that, it's easy for longing to deteriorate into self- pity. The letters, particularly from young women whose grief is still raw, are often touching; for the others, the reader is tempted to murmur, ``Get a life.''
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-201-48357-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
Yet another entrant in the anecdotal, pop-psych literature on marriage and divorce, this one from the coauthors of Second Chances (1989). Psychologist/marriage counselor Wallerstein and science/medical writer Blakeslee announce sententiously that Americans ``share a profound sense of discomfort with the present state of marriage and the family, even wondering sometimes if marriage as an institution can survive.'' They go on to analyze the life habits of 50 mostly white, comfortably middle-class, well- educated couples in the San Francisco Bay Area—a group that Wallerstein admits is narrow but which she claims is socially trend-setting. The couples neatly cleave into four fuzzy categories of marriage: romantic, rescue, companionate, and traditional. When interviewed, the couples had all been married for more than nine years, had one or more children, regarded their marriage as happy, and were willing to be interviewed separately and together. Other of Wallerstein's previous studies, making use of similarly small, homogenous samples, have rightly come under attack by her peers (Newsweek, February 6, 1989) for their built-in statistical invalidity, but she has not taken their criticisms to heart. Her conclusions generally boil down to the expected: that in good marriages each partner must respect the other and let the other be his or her own person. The book is studded with such startlingly bald truisms in the place of meaningful analysis. Only occasionally do the authors hit on a useful point, as when they observe that all successful marriages, rather than being conflict-free, make allowance for ``the expression of difference, conflict, and anger'' and that an adolescent in the household is a blasting cap that can blow apart the stoutest marital fortress. One in two marriages now ends in divorce in this country, a sadly telling statistic. Regrettably, it also seems as if one in two psychology doctorates ends in a generally superficial book.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-89919-969-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
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