Alison Gopnik

Gopnik argues that human young (she discusses toddlers and elementary age children as much as babies) rely upon the evolutionary strategy of "protected immaturity" which allows individuals the possibility of learning how to live from others while their immediate needs are met by caregivers. "While children may be useless, they are useless on purpose." [72] And this "learning how to live" is not merely copying what they observe those others doing, rather it involves judicious imagination to show more consider how else it might be done, and whether (and precisely how) it would be better another way. It's also as much about how minds work as it is about how bodies or objects work.

Gopnik carefully reviews the evidence for this strategy, the various ways it shows up in human evolution and adaptation generally, as well as how it plays out for individuals. Think: teen rejection of parental lifeways, college graduates rejecting the experience of middle managers; the links between imaginary friends and novelists. The ways that individuals change and vary, is closely linked to the ways the species (and community) changes. And she drops more than a few film references.

We, and those around us, may create our psychological worlds more than we discover them, and discover our physical worlds more than we create them, but the same distinctive human reasoning is involved in both cases. The causal maps in our minds allow us both to understand the existing physical and psychological worlds and to invent and realize new physical and psychological worlds. They simultaneously let us make predictions, imagine alternative possibilities, and create fictions. [68]

The emphasis upon psychology as much as (empirical) philosophy is gratifying, with Gopnik considering some of how we develop a self ("executive control" and autobiographical memory) and not only how we come to understand how we might organise a home or plan a city. Love and attachment are as important concepts as causality or technological innovation. Morality is as relevant as logic, and both involve similar assumptions: that we can take the perspective of others; infer intention & distinguish from accident; that we can follow abstract rules. [204]

Easily the conversational yet substantial survey I'd hoped it would be, emphasizing the big picture over pieces. None of it was particularly surprising, neither was it anything I readily could have relayed to anyone else before reading it. Gratifying to have Gopnik sketch out in considerable detail a hazy picture I thought I had of how people work. show less

This was a fairly quick read that packed in a lot of depth. The central premise of the book is that "parenting" as a verb, as an act of trying to produce a certain type of adult, is a endeavor that does not work well and makes us less happy. Instead, we should think of being a parent as providing an environment where the unique relationship between children and those who care for them (parents or otherwise) can help them learn about and explore the world.

Humans have a long period of show more childhood relative to most animals. This childhood provides a chance for a long period of exploration, learning, and variability. Parents transmit their cultural and technological knowledge to children and children take that and shape their knowledge so that eventually they can shape the world themselves.

However, learning generally does not happen through the intentional education that we provide when we set out to provide enriching experiences to our children. It does not come from flash cards, educational videos, tutoring, or any of the many other aids that we provide to help train children how to perform well on tests. Instead, children learn most effectively through observation and conversation. Children imitate adults in very intentional ways. They do not merely copy behavior. Instead, even from an early age, children work on inferring the goal and knowledge level of the person they are watching and will explore and vary their imitation to try to accomplish the goal more effectively. Children also ask questions quite intentionally. When children form endless chains of whys, the questions generally work to strengthen their ability to predict how the world works. '

Children learn best through play. That does not mean that unstructured environments are the best for learning (although they are likely better than overly structured environments). Rather, what works best is when adults provide scaffolding: rich environments which trigger curiosity about interesting topics, pointers for when children want to learn more, and perhaps most importantly, a playmate. Play is delicate though. As soon as play starts to feel required or like work, it will stop being play and learning will grind to a halt.

Young children are focused on the broad, messy process of exploration. As children get older, they work more on developing their ability to exploit the knowledge they have. Older children work on refining the skills they have until they can perform them with ease. Older children are more sober and reliable, in many ways, than teenagers. During the teenage years the brain once again prioritizes exploration, this time exploration into the world of independence. It is commonly believed that the teenage brain is quite immature and as a consequence that, perhaps, we should give teens less rights and responsibilities until they are older. However, this model is wrong in a small but important way. The teenage brain is immature, but the prefrontal cortex control that will make a teenage brain into a sober adult brain does not develop at a certain age. It develops through use. Thus, instead of giving teens less responsibility and then throwing them out into the world as adults, we should be giving them more responsibility sooner -- but in an environment where the consequences of their actions ramp up slowly.

Parents are often concerned about the affect of technology on children. Gopnik points out that as much as we are seeing change now, past technologies like reading, trains, and telegraphs caused at least as much societal change as the internet. Yet now we barely think of these as technologies anymore. Technology is disorienting when it is introduced to adults because we no longer explore playfully (partially because our brains are less plastic, but also because we do not let ourselves). Our children will develop new techniques and new norms for dealing with technology. This does not mean that technology doesn't have an impact. Written text, fast travel, and instant communication have changed the course of human existence -- and not always for the better. New technologies such as the internet continue to do so. However, what we do not need to worry about is that our children will be adrift on the technologies of today. They will see them as natural.

As an aside, one of the interesting things about reading is that readers have significant portions of their brain that are specialized for reading. This is despite the fact that reading has happened much more recently than could have been accounted for by biological evolution. The reading brain co-opted processing centers, such as visual centers which detect edges, to become so efficient that reading is both fluid and involuntary. The mind is incredibly adaptable.

Gopnik ends on a chapter about how we value children. Having a child is choosing to take part in a special relationship that will change a person forever. Parents, in a very real well, do not just consider their children's interests as important as their own. Parents seem to literally treat the interests of their young children, as their own interests. Yet raising children also has traditionally been a community task. Care takers throughout a community have had roles in making sure that children have both the material and social resources they need to thrive. This is something we have lost in our industrial and postindustrial society. Figuring out how to modernize this sort of community care which is not based in generics but in specific relationships is a pressing problem of our time. Gopnik also points out that taking care of parents as they age is a similar problem. As a society, we tend to treat it as a problem each family needs to solve individually, but we could structure our society to value care taking and provide better support for care takers.

Anyone who cares about children, whether or not they have or plan to have their own, should read this book. show less

Enlightening, thought-provoking and often amusing. In someone else’s hands, all the concepts covered in this book could have been turned into pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. Gopnik, however, is an engaging thinker and writer who a) knows her stuff and b) can explain it to laypeople in a way that’s clear without being dumbed-down. Even if small children aren’t aware that they’re constantly developing, testing and revising their theories about how the world works (and imagining how it show more coulda shoulda woulda been different had things gone this way instead of that way), they -- and we -- certainly do it all the time. show less

The data shows that our modern concept of "parenting" as a job with an outcome (you will grow into a good adult if I do everything correctly) is super misguided and not helpful. It really doesn't matter what style of parenting we choose, what matters is that we create fertile soil in which our children can develop and grow. The adults they turn into, well, just like in a garden you get things you don't expect, you get failure, you get rot, you get joyful surprises. It was a nice analogy.
A show more bit heavy on the self-aggrandizing "grandmothers are the best things in society" angle that she takes here, however. I get it, you as a baby boomer grandmother, are god's gift to your family. So many cutesy stories of how important she is in her grandchild's life were distracting for me from the research and science supporting her argument. show less