America: Experts, parents, and a century of advice about children

Ms Hulbert's book is a thoroughly researched history of the experts who over the past century advised American parents on how to raise their children. She reports their philosophies of child-rearing, their professional lives, their research if they were involved in any, and in equal depth their personal lives. She also regularly discusses the "children's movement" through the century with descriptions of several major national meetings or federal studies on parenting and children. Her introduction alludes to Ellen Key's best seller of 1904, The Century of the Child, a title applied to the dawning century described in Raising America. She quotes from Key's book where Key envisages a new focus on parenting and children that could transform our species to something greater and asks for, "an entirely new conception of the vocation of mother, a tremendous effort of will, continuous inspiration." Key's, "entirely new conception of the vocation of mother," is referred to by the author as a "very tall order." Her book does not address what would be best for children or mankind; its focus is on what the expert's advice means for parents. Their advice nearly always means challenges and stress for parents. The author also mentions that calls for enlightened parenting were not new to the dawn of the 20th century. "What stands out at the turn of the 20th century," Hulbert declared in a earlier essay, "is the explicit emphasis by parents on their own right to disobey their parents, or at least to do things differently--and scientifically." The experts also want things done differently but there is no indication in Raising America that anything is done better or that expert advice gradually improved in any way. "It wasn't firm data that drove child-rearing expertise, but changing social concerns that seemed to dictate its swerves and emphases." Hulbert's assessment of the experts mirrors Kay S. Hymowitz's view of the larger society in her book, Ready or Not, where she states, "Human beings fashion the childhood their culture needs." Hulbert finds that the parenting styles espoused by some experts are in right in step with business models of the day. Stephen Covey, described by The Economist as, the world's most influential management thinker," easily moved from management thinker to parenting expert. One of the first experts discussed in the book