A wonderfully atypical teen parenting book that leans into joy.
A refreshing and practical guide to raising teens.
In her latest parenting book, psychologist Apter challenges society’s negative view of teenagers by using brain science to offer clear, empathetic explanations of maddening adolescent behaviors ranging from “rudeness” to “rebellion.” Many books define teens solely through negative behavior and emphasize parenting strategies related to “boundaries and control,” offering “analysis that reduces teens to hormonally driven neurotics.” This perspective erases the delight families can take in this time of intense intellectual growth. “Adolescents’ forthright observations, their exquisite sensibilities, their joys and terrors in self-discovery are belittled, marginalized, ignored,” writes Apter. While conventional wisdom blames teens’ impulsive behavior on hormones, in reality, these changes are largely attributable to a burst in brain development comparable to that of early childhood. The author’s advice is based on the fact that, like small children, teens are undergoing such intense development that they need supportive adults in their life more than ever before. Apter celebrates the caregiver-child relationship, encouraging active listening and showing teens how to identify complex emotions. The author argues that we must also rethink our conception of how long children need parenting; new research suggests that behaviors usually associated with teens actually last until the age of 24. Even at 18, she writes, “the neural networks for impulse and emotion control are not yet at full adult strength.” Therefore, the author believes we should extend parenting well into the 20s. Apter’s approach is original, thoroughly researched, and eminently constructive. Her strategies for using empathy and active listening to manage teen behavior are compassionate, clear, and proactive. The book’s main limitation is the lack of intersectional analysis. While the author does mention nonbinary and transitioning individuals, there is not enough concrete consideration of alternative gender identities or race.
A wonderfully atypical teen parenting book that leans into joy.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00651-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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