Taking Sides: Who’s Raising Baby? In a world where we are constantly juggling busy schedules, parents face many challenges regarding what activities to involve their children in, when to get them involved, and how rigorously to push them to excel. Anne R. Pierce discusses her opinion on these challenges in her article “Who’s Raising Baby? Challenges to Modern-Day Parenting.” The purpose of this paper is to identify three weaknesses in the research of the article and one strength, as well as provide an opinion on the argument.
Summary
In “Who’s Raising Baby?,” Anne R. Pierce compared the relaxed childhoods of the past to the current expectation for children to be heavily involved in many activities at a young age, believing that children
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She quotes David Elkind from Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk to make several points. This allows the reader to be confident in the fact that she is citing reliable and credible sources. When sources are not cited, it is hard to tell where they came from and cannot be trusted as a valid source and the reader would wonder if the argument was credible. If the reader is familiar with a source, they are able to apply their previous knowledge about the person or article to help them make judgements on the validity as the …show more content…
I was forced into dance as a young child and hated it, so I am wary about conforming to making my children do things they have no interest in simply because other parents are doing it to their children. I realize that my personal experience with dance as a child is not a very valid source because all children are different. Just because I had a negative experience with it does not mean that other children who were forced to do something outside of their comfort zone did not discover that it was something they loved to do, leading to a lifelong passion. If I wanted to strengthen this source, I could look into finding research done on children in similar circumstances to me and see if I can generalize my experience to a broader population.
Conclusion
In this paper I discussed three weaknesses and a strength of the article “Who’s raising baby?” by Anne R. Pierce and provided my opinion of the issue. Critical thinking is so vital in reading articles because it helps us distinguish possible flaws in reasoning rather than just blindly accepting the opinion of the writer, who could be manipulating information to present the argument in an incorrect way. Critical thinking gives us the tools we need to make informed judgements about an argument and form our own opinions
Hanna Rosin’s article, “The Overprotected Kid”, addresses the issue that kids are missing out on developmental benefits when they are not allowed to explore the world by weighing their own risks. She introduces rhetoric concepts such as audience, genre, and purpose to get her point across to her readers. Rosin uses these ideas to portray her opinion in a unique way to connect to her readers and persuade them to consider her viewpoint as their own. This article seems to be written as a persuasive journal entry to parents to sway their parenting behaviors to be less overprotective. In Rosin’s article, she makes a strong argument that kids need independence by making her audience, genre, and purpose known from start to finish.
“Successful parenting does not just happen: parents must make a conscious effort to be active in their children 's lives by nourishing and developing their children 's talents and skills.” (Spring,
In “The Joy of Quiet,” Pico Iyer convinces the reader by using statistical evidence that children should take time away from technology given to them in today’s world and find time to spend alone and by themselves. Pico gives me evidence, which is credible in making me believe that children need alone time. He states, “ The
Sallie Tisdale describes an uneducated sixteen-year-old girl that doesn’t even know how babies are formed. It was not the girl’s fault for getting pregnant; she was raped (Tisdale 416). Knowing this, the audience, like the author, feels compassion for the girl. It would be unfair to the girl if she couldn’t have the abortion. The audience recognizes that although abortion is cruel, it is needed.
In Ellen Ruppel's, “In Praise of Bordeom” she explains from her personal history that boredom can be more beneficial than having an itinerary for your child because it can suppress the room to grow in creativity and imagination. For example, when she was a child, she consistently attended a vacant parking lot and would entertain herself with activities such as reading books, bouncing balls around and playing in the grass. She mentions that we are losing trust in our kids and don’t give them a long enough leash to navigate into the world. Ellen points the finger at marketing, because these days we are taught that the more money we spend on a learned progress like karate, organized sports and lessons, the more successful they will grow up to be. She feels that parents are straining a child's creativity and that play is
Childhood is an age of bliss where innocence holds oneself tightly. Tragically, American history disagrees. As industrialization started to become one of the biggest leading powers in the American economy and society during the early 20th century, businesses began to hire whomever they could, including children. In July 22, 1905 in Philadelphia, Florence Kelley took an appalled, but determined tone when she spoke out against child labor in an effort to give women voting rights to right this wrong. By using sound rhetorical language, diction, and rhetorical appeals such as pathos and logos, Kelley was able to create a vivid speech that reflects on the inhumane ways child labor inflicts harm on the innocence that describes childhood, as well as convince the audience that women’s suffrage is the solution to this immoral problem.
The characters in Parenthood appear to be the evolving family for the 1990’s. The Buckman family is comprised of four different parts that include a Grandma, Grandpa, and Larry, the youngest child; Gill, one of the fathers; Karen, Gill’s wife; Kevin, Gill’s oldest son; Taylor, Gill’s only daughter; Justin, Gill’s youngest son; Helen, a single mom; Julie, Helen’s only daughter; Gary, Helen’s only son; Nathan, one of the fathers; Susan, Nathan’s wife; and Patty, Nathan’s only girl. This paper will address the Buckman’s evolving family, including the dynamics of change in the family and strategies for coping with change. The first family in the Buckman family is Gill and Karen.
In her book “Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life,” Lareau depicts a family where the eldest son’s schedule “determines where the adults must be and when they must be there, sets the timing and types of meals for everyone… and even shapes the family vacation plans” (42). In the specific story, the parents have jobs with flexible hours, so they are able to give the child the ability to participate in all of the activities that interest him. While it seems like a wonderful thing to be able to allow children to explore everything they are interested in, it can be difficult for the children to learn that their parents’ lives are also a top priority. If a child is taught to believe that their schedule is the most important part of their family life, they may struggle with someone else’s activities taking priority. Also, if the parents have more than one child then they must deal with giving equal priority to everyone, which is difficult, if not impossible.
Many descriptive words are used throughout the essay “Family Counterculture” by Ellen Goodman, to explain how hard it is to raise children. “Mothers and fathers are expected to screen virtually every aspect of their children’s lives.” This is one of the ways she defends the point that parenting has changed and has gotten harder. Even though parenting has changed “all you need to join is a child.”
It starts with infancy and continues to adulthood. By gaining knowledge about child development, a synopsis of what children can do at various ages can be formed. Following are the three theoretical perspectives of child development: i. Maturationist’s View of Child Development : Maturationism is a premature childhood educational philosophy emphasizing the child as a growing individual in which knowledge exists. Based on Arnold Gessell’s work, maturationists suggest that “genetic factors play a bigger role in development than environmental ones” [8].
The Industrial Revolution did highlight the poor treatment of children and bring to the forefront the morality of allowing children to work such long hours and subsequently depriving them of an education. This essay will focus on the work of Jean Piaget and Sigmund Freud outlining the contributions of both theorists to the child development debate and to the field of Play Therapy. Both theorists have contributed to the field of play therapy. Freud used play therapy to help a child with a horse phobia. He believed that the child could play out their subconscious feeling and desires and
A newer sociological concept, helicopter parenting, revolves around millennial students and the close, dependent relationships they have with their parents and grandparents. These are parents/grandparents who are actively involved in their child’s education, even at the collegiate level. This desire to micro-manage a child’s actions and decisions comes from the growing societal emphasis to achieve professional success. Professional success now being defined as excelling through high school and proceeding to an elite ivy league college with no “pit-stops” along the way for free-play and relaxation. This narrow definition of success expects children to perform at very high academic levels, which their parents/grandparents push them harder and
After school, from 3 to 6 p.m, is a critical period of time in a child’s life. After school programs help keep kids safe and inspire them to learn during that period of time. After school programs are organized programs that youth can participate in outside of a traditional school day. Enrolling children in after school programs would provide them with benefits that unenrolled children would not receive, such as reduce risky behavior and promote physical health. After school programs provide a safe environment for children, while positively impacting their academics, safety, and their future.
Chapter 4 The most commonly accepted contemporary framework for viewing parental involvement was inspired by the ecological model of Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1986) and designed from a social and organisational perspective (Epstein, 1992). It identifies three major contexts within which children develop and learn: the family, the school, and the community (see Figure). The Overlapping Spheres of Influence model recognises that there are some practices that family, school and community conduct separately and that there are others that they conduct jointly in order to influence the growth and learning of the child. According to Epstein, successful partnerships must be forged between these three spheres in order best to meet the needs of the child.
Through this knowledge, the teacher can presume how children of a particular age group will act, what they are capable of doing and what they are not likely able to do. Consequently, the teacher can devise activities rather confidently by taking all these aspects into consideration. At this stage, the teacher can take advantage of the windows of opportunity for the child’s growth. In other words, the teacher benefits from the sensitive period of a child’s development to provide him with enriching activities; the best period for the child to learn and develop further. In addition, what the children learn should be relevant to their environment and life experiences.