Here are 100 books that The Nurture Assumption fans have personally recommended if you like
The Nurture Assumption.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As a primary head teacher, then literacy consultant, I wrote many books about education but at the age of 50 I changed tack. A meeting with a researcher who’d discovered an alarming decline in young children’s listening skills led to eight years’ research on the effects of modern lifestyles on children’s development. It involved many interviews with experts on diet, sleep, play, language, family life, childcare, education, screen-time, marketing influences and parenting styles – and a great deal of reading. By the time Toxic Childhood was first published in 2006 I’d realised that, in a 21st century culture, society should be paying far more attention to child development, especially in the early years. I hope to go on spreading that message until my dying breath.
At a hippy party in 1967, I found this book lying on a table and picked it up. I’d soon forgotten the party raging around me because I was totally riveted by Sybil Marshall’s story. She was a primary teacher sent to run a little country school during the Second World War. The children had been terribly neglected and at first seemed uneducable, so Sybil decided to re-motivate them through music, art, and drama. By the end of the evening, I’d decided to leave university and train as a primary teacher.
I have taught psychology in UK universities for over 35 years. I love finding a 'way in' to the subject for my students. I challenge them to find a passion, and I love seeing that passion 'take off' in someone. In my experience, these are five books that have helped psychology students (me included) to find their passion.
I was inspired to follow a career in psychology after reading this short, fascinating book about the way children think. I loved its accessibility and its learnedness.
When I talk to students who are just starting out in psychology, I urge them to find a passion. This book was the kickstarter for my passion, which has turned into over 35 years of teaching and research. It turned my general interest in the way children talk into research expertise in the domain of communication disabilities.
It is essential that we understand and overcome barriers to communication because language lies at the very heart of the human condition.
Margaret Donaldson's seminal work on child development, first published in 1978, has become a classic inquiry into the nature of human thought.
In this concise and brilliantly readable book, Margaret Donaldson shows that context is key when it comes to the development of language and thought, and how the right support can ensure children are skilled in these areas before they even start school. She revisits earlier theories of child development, notably those of Jean Piaget, to expose flaws in the accepted wisdom on child psychology and to suggest a range of new strategies to help children combat difficulties.
As a primary head teacher, then literacy consultant, I wrote many books about education but at the age of 50 I changed tack. A meeting with a researcher who’d discovered an alarming decline in young children’s listening skills led to eight years’ research on the effects of modern lifestyles on children’s development. It involved many interviews with experts on diet, sleep, play, language, family life, childcare, education, screen-time, marketing influences and parenting styles – and a great deal of reading. By the time Toxic Childhood was first published in 2006 I’d realised that, in a 21st century culture, society should be paying far more attention to child development, especially in the early years. I hope to go on spreading that message until my dying breath.
Postman was a hugely erudite and witty writer. When I discovered this book in the 1990s, I was immediately convinced by his argument that our modern conception of ‘childhood’ is connected with the invention of the printing press … and with human progress over succeeding centuries. I was just as convinced by his concern that the recent explosion of screen-based culture would have profound effects on childhood and, indeed, on the quality of human thought. I’m therefore deeply honoured that Toxic Childhood is now on an ‘A’ Level Sociology syllabus alongside The Disappearance of Childhood – can’t believe that we’re sitting on the same shelf!
From the vogue for nubile models to the explosion in the juvenile crime rate, this modern classic of social history and media traces the precipitous decline of childhood in America today−and the corresponding threat to the notion of adulthood.
Deftly marshaling a vast array of historical and demographic research, Neil Postman, author of Technopoly, suggests that childhood is a relatively recent invention, which came into being as the new medium of print imposed divisions between children and adults. But now these divisions are eroding under the barrage of television, which turns the adult secrets of sex and violence into popular…
As a primary head teacher, then literacy consultant, I wrote many books about education but at the age of 50 I changed tack. A meeting with a researcher who’d discovered an alarming decline in young children’s listening skills led to eight years’ research on the effects of modern lifestyles on children’s development. It involved many interviews with experts on diet, sleep, play, language, family life, childcare, education, screen-time, marketing influences and parenting styles – and a great deal of reading. By the time Toxic Childhood was first published in 2006 I’d realised that, in a 21st century culture, society should be paying far more attention to child development, especially in the early years. I hope to go on spreading that message until my dying breath.
In 2020, as Chair of the Upstart Scotland campaign, I was invited to edit a collection of essays by experts from a wide range of disciplines. All were arguing for a more enlightened and coherent approach to the care and education of children between three and seven years of age. The 19th century approach to education in the UK and USA is completely out of kilter with children’s needs in a 21st-century world and we need radical change, starting at the beginning. This is when developmental foundations are laid that will underpin children’s lifelong learning, health and well-being. All teachers need to know about early child development and helping pull together so much wisdom and humanity into one readable little book was a great privilege and an absolutely joyous experience.
Always the Cinderella of the education system, the significance of early years has been seriously under-estimated. Play is the Way brings together leading practitioners, policy-makers and academics to explain how a coherent approach to early years – centred on positive relationships and play – will not only result in better educational performance but in greatly improved health and well-being for future Scottish citizens. They challenge the deeply-ingrained cultural acceptance, throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK, that formal instruction in the three Rs (reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic) should begin at the age of four or five – at least…
It was almost by accident that I became who I turned out to be as a professional, a developmental scientist interested in how early-life experiences shape who we become. Had someone asked me when I graduated from high school what were the chances of me becoming a scientist and teacher, I would have answered “zero, zero”! During my now 40+ year academic career I've come to appreciate how complex the many forces are that shape who we become. There's no nature without nurture and no nurture without nature. This emergent realization led me to learn about and study many aspects of developmental experience, like parenting and peer relations, and the role of genetics and evolution.
How parenting—and other factors—shape infant-parent attachment security/insecurity and the effects of attachment on child, adolescent, and adult development has been the subject of extensive study for more than 4 decades.
This edited volume takes stock of what developmental scholars have learned as well as what challenges to attachment theory and research remain to be addressed. The contributors to this edited volume are all well-recognized experts in the field.
The ongoing growth of attachment research has given rise to new perspectives on classic theoretical questions as well as fruitful new debates. This unique book identifies nine central questions facing the field and invites leading authorities to address them in 46 succinct chapters. Multiple perspectives are presented on what constitutes an attachment relationship, the best ways to measure attachment security, how internal working models operate, the importance of early attachment relationships for later behavior, challenges in cross-cultural research, how attachment-based interventions work, and more. The concluding chapter by the editors delineates points of convergence and divergence among the contributions and…
When I first became a mom, I searched for an evidence-based, practical, whole-picture, supportive book to guide us through our baby’s first year – and couldn’t find it. I have a doctorate degree in biology and specialize in ecology, a discipline that studies how living things relate to one another and interact with their environment. Most of my research focuses on what young animals need to thrive. So I decided to write the book I had been searching for by applying my research training, my perspective as an ecologist, and my experience as a parent of three children.
This awesome book covers not only raising a baby, but parenting in general. Each of its 10 chapters upends traditional thinking on a parenting topic, like “how to boost baby’s language skills” and “why siblings fight”. It is so engaging that, despite being a bleary-eyed mom of a newborn, I read it in two days!
One of the most influential books about children ever published, Nurture Shock offers a revolutionary new perspective on children that upends a library's worth of conventional wisdom. With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, the authors demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, NurtureShock gets to the core of how we grow, learn and live.
Released in hardcover in September 2009, Nurture Shock remained on the New York Times best seller list for three months, and was one of Amazon's best…
I love books and kids in all varieties and write for both adults and children. My parenting books It’s OK Not to Share and It’s OK to Go Up the Slide, promote play, conflict mediation skills, and no homework, and I’m a national speaker on early childhood education. My most recent book for children is the award-winning novel The Griffins of Castle Cary, an adventure featuring three kids, a Newfoundland dog, and a ghost problem. I’m a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and besides writing, I host two podcasts: BookSmitten (children’s books), and Renegade Rules (early childhood and parenting). Enjoy the books!
This book is comprehensive and an excellent guide to cope with “all” your questions, from difficult behavior, fears, trouble with transitions, children’s bodies, weapon play, preferring one parent over another, you name it, this book covers it. I love this book because the authors do a wonderful job of explaining the underlying child development reasons behind baffling behaviors while giving you confidence at the same time.
Informative, inspiring, and enlightening, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be provides parents with the building blocks they need to discover their own parenting philosophy and develop effective parenting strategies. Through in-depth information, practical suggestions, and many lively first-person stories, the authors address the many dilemmas and joys that the parent of young children encounter and demonstrate a range of solutions to the major issues that arise in the raising of babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Full of warmth, clarity, humor, and respect, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be gives parents permission to be human: to question, to learn, to…
I am a marital therapist with thirty-five years of experience helping couples fall back in love and deal with the fall out from infidelity. I trained with RELATE – the UK’s largest couple counselling charity – and have a private practice in Berlin and lead a team of therapists based in the UK. I have heard over a thousand couples argue – more often than not – about their children. So I am always looking for books that will give a wider perspective and practical advice on how to be a parent without exhausting your marriage and forgetting to still be lovers.
‘I can’t just flick a switch’. It’s something that I hear in my therapy office all the time but what if you could transition better from work to parenting – because they each require a different part of you. Anita Cleare was a great guest on my podcast: The Meaningful Life with Andrew G Marshall. She is good at explaining the different stages and challenges of child development and how stressed our parents often end up fighting with each other. Parenting as a team, rather than bickering with each other, is often one of the breakthrough moments for improving my clients' love lives.
Most modern parents work. And we have limited time, limited energy, limited patience and too much to do. We are seldom at our best at the end of a long working day when the parenting shift kicks in. We want to do the right thing but, in the thick of it, with no time to think and no energy to spare, it's easy to miss the small changes that could make a big difference to our child's (and our own) well-being.
The Work/Parent Switch is essential reading for every working parent.…
As a social historian, I have helped to direct scholarly attention to the history of family life and helped to create the field of history of children. I'm the editor of a pioneering three-volume encyclopedia on the history of children and the author of six books and editor of three others based on extensive research about children’s experiences in the United States and the Western world. I've also been widely interviewed on the subject. The End of American Childhood brings this research experience and broad expertise in the field to a subject of urgent interest to today’s parents who want to understand how their own views about children and their child-rearing perspectives are grounded historically.
Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America probes what I consider to be the basic dilemma of modern American parenting – how the love for children and concern for their welfare has led to growing anxiety among parents eager to do it right.
In imaginative research into different dimensions of culture, Stearns shows that middle-class parents became increasingly self-conscious and self-questioning about meeting the needs of their children starting in the early twentieth century. The book probes the emotional consequences of modern parenting’s commitment to encouraging child expression and individual happiness.
Stearns’s exploration demonstrates one of the consequences of the revolution—from viewing children as having utility to having only emotional value—first defined by Zelizer. It suggests how even the best-intended changes can have unexpected consequences.
An examination into the history of modern parenting
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children?
Peter N.…
I’m a child psychologist, mother of three, and parenting writer who reads way too much parenting content. My personal mission is to be a voice of science-based, compassionate, and realistic parenting guidance to counteract the pitfalls of modern parenting advice. As a psychologist, I know much of this advice lacks good science and even common sense. As a mother, I find a majority of parenting advice oppressive in its unrealistic expectations and a source of unnecessary guilt, shame, and feelings of failure—especially for mothers. I love highlighting the work of other parenting experts who share my mission: to empower and uplift parents with good information and authentic support.
I love Wenner Moyer’s warmth and humor interwoven with good old-fashioned science about how to parent kids to be decent human beings.
I devoured the book on Kindle and then immediately bought a hard copy so I could easily pull it off the shelf for reference. And I often do.
She is the furthest from preachy or self-righteous while giving rationales and tips for how to raise empathic kids who aren’t racist, sexist, or completely self-absorbed. It’s a must for every parent’s bookshelf.
As featured in The Guardian, How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes is a clear, actionable, sometimes humorous (but always science-based) guide for parents on how to shape their kids into honest, kind, generous, confident, independent, and resilient people . . . who just might save the world one day.
As an award-winning science journalist, Melinda Wenner Moyer was regularly asked to investigate and address all kinds of parenting questions: how to potty train, when and whether to get vaccines, and how to help kids sleep through the night. But as Melinda's children grew, she found that one huge area…
