Alison Gopnik: The New Science of Child Development

Alison Gopnik, Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley; Author, The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children
In conversation with Dr. Julie Lythcott-Haims, Former Dean of Freshman, Stanford University; Author, How to Raise An Adult

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, “parenting” has transformed into an obsessive, controlling, goal-oriented effort to create a particular kind of child. But children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other.

Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge research, Gopnik shatters key myths of “good parenting,” and suggests a new approach—where variability and flexibility in childhood lets them innovate, create and survive in an unpredictable world.