Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call “parenting” is a surprisingly new invention. In the past 30 years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion-dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult.
In The Gardener and the Carpenter, pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik argues that the familiar 21st-century picture of parents and children is profoundly wrong – it’s not just based on bad science, it’s bad for kids and parents, too. Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. “Parenting” won’t make children learn – but caring parents let children learn by creating secure, loving environments.
About Author:
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught since 1988. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD from Oxford University. She is a world leader in cognitive science, particularly the study of children’s learning and development. She is the author of over 100 journal articles and several books including the bestselling and critically acclaimed popular books The Scientist in the Crib, William Morrow, 1999, The Philosophical Baby: What children’s minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009, and The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2016. She is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
دیدگاه های جدید علم روان شناسی رشد در باب رابطه والدین و فرزندان
برخی والدین، درست مثل نجاری که تنهٔ درخت را بُرش می‌زند و از آن چند صندلی می‌سازد، طبق نقشه، برای تربیت فرزندانشان طرحی کامل و دقیق در ذهن دارند. آنها آيندهٔ فرزندان را به‌دقت تصور می‌کنند و می‌کوشند تا آنها را طوری شکل دهند که به آن طرح ایدئال تبدیل شوند.
در مقابل، والدینی هستند که برای شکل دادن به فرزندان تلاشی نمی‌کنند. آنها به باغبانی می‌مانند که از کودک همچون گیاهان حساس باغچه مراقبت می‌کند. فرزندان را در بستری امن و آزاد پرورش می‌دهند و اجازه می‌دهند تا هر یک از آنها، موجودی مستقل و یگانه و خلاق شود.
آلیسون گوپنیک، استاد روانشناسی رشد و کودک در دانشگاه برکلی، که خود هم مادر است و هم مادربزرگ، این دو الگوی والدین را در کنار هم گذاشته و به ما می‌آموزد که باغبان باشیم، نه نجار.
درباره نویسنده:
آلیسون گوپنیک (انگلیسی: Alison Gopnik؛ زادهٔ june ۱۶, ۱۹۵۵ ) دانشمند در زمینه روانشناسی رشد اهل ایالات متحده آمریکا است. وی استاد روانشناسی و استاد فلسفه در دانشگاه کالیفرنیا، برکلی است.
