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All Joy and No Fun: THE PARADOX OF MODERN PARENTHOOD
Author:
Senior, Jennifer
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Class:
306.874
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: HQ755.8
Print Run: 75000
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ISBN-13: 9780062072221
LCCN: BD13262007
Imprint: Ecco
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Pub Date: 01/28/2014
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $26.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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308 pages ; 24 cm
H 9",
W 6",
D 1.05",
1.14 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Library Journal Bestsellers
Los Angeles Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers List
New York Times Bestsellers: Adult Nonfiction
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 16th ed.
Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction, 17th ed.
Publishers Weekly Bestsellers
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Child Care/Parenting
Family Life
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BISAC Subjects: |
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Children with Special Needs
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Motherhood
FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Parenting / Parent & Adult Child
PSYCHOLOGY / Developmental / Child
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Marriage & Family
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LC Subjects:
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Parenthood
Parenting
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SEARS Subjects: |
Parenthood
Parenting
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 10/01/2013 |
| In this 'smart and lively myth-buster...expertly researched and brilliantly executed' (Daniel Gilbert, bestselling author of 'Stumbling on Happiness'), a journalist dissects a vast body of data on parenting and presents the astonishing findings about the effects of children on the lives of their parents. 320pp., 75K, Auth res: New York, NY, Tour |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 02/01/2014 |
| What are the effects of children on their parents? Academics have long studied the question, and most readers have some back-of-the-hand knowledge of the subject. But rarely have those two groups been in conversation--until now. Jennifer Senior successfully connects a barrage of scholarship with the real experiences of moms and dads, and the resulting book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, is completely fascinating. Chapters are organized loosely by stage of childhood, explaining how each stage impacts parents. Infancy leads to sleeplessness, toddlerhood to constant negotiation, middle childhood to overscheduled lives, and so on. Senior is a skilled writer who can take the reader into a particular scene, say, a kitchen in Brooklyn. But she can also beautifully gloss a complicated academic text and then pull out a quote so lovely you want to tack it on your wall. Senior is a terrific guide to the subject, in part because she's not afraid to offer a dissenting opinion. Take the oft-cited studies of parents who report less happiness with the birth of each successive child. Such studies, Senior argues, leave a lot out. Yes, life with children might not be much fun. But there's something different to be had with children: meaning, connectedness, legacy. Joy. Parents are in it for the long game. As the mother of a 3-year-old, I found myself underlining passages that begged to be shared with friends. Did you know, for instance, that the average toddler only listens 60 percent of the time? You, too, might see your situation reflected in these pages. In short, All Joy and No Fun is a terrific read that speaks to something so present, yet so intangible: how each generation of children inevitably and irrevocably changes the generation of parents who bore them. Kelly Blewett. 320pg. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 01/15/2014 |
| What can we learn from studying the effects of children on parents? The past 10 or 15 years will likely be looked back on as a period when parents sank into a morass of identity crisis, with "helicopter parents," "tiger moms," and legions of hand-wringing moms and dads trying to figure out where the line is for good intentions based on sound science. It naturally follows that researchers would turn their gazes away from the effects of parents on their children--enough has been written about that to fill a library--and toward the effects of children on their parents. From the starting point of parenting being a "high cost/high reward activity," New York contributor Senior delves into a broad survey of the topic, parsing out the different arenas in which children are molding the lives of their parents. Employment, marriage, hobbies, habits, relationships with friends and other family, even a parent's sense of his- or herself: Senior takes an analytical approach to each of these areas, looking at them through a variety of lenses--historical, economic, philosophical, anthropological. She finds that French mothers simultaneously enjoyed caring more for their children and spent less time actually doing it than American women. She examines the phenomenon of "concerted cultivation," with kids being overscheduled to boost their performances in years to come, and how both narcissism and concern about future opportunities go hand in hand with this level of control. Teenagers, with a heady combination of being both "wild horses and penned veal," have a great deal of influence over their parents, and the author does an admirable job of reviewing the current state of affairs with technology--specifically, the reversal of roles, with parents asking their kids to friend them on Facebook. Senior could have made this book twice as long given the minefield parents and their kids face, but what she did produce is well-considered and valuable information. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 03/15/2014 |
| Journalist Senior's (contributing editor, New York magazine) new title will likely be shelved next to parenting books filled with do's and don'ts, but this isn't another "how to" book. Rather, it aims a social science lens at parents themselves and addresses questions such as: How does having kids affect our lives? Does it make us happier? Does it make us less happy? Senior profiles clans in Minnesota and Texas as she looks at the realities of family life. She doesn't shy away from the "no fun" aspect of her findings. Parts of the book feel bleak as we hear of strained marriages, parental guilt, and general exhaustion; the joy comes in the simple moments. Senior says, "By spending time with young children--building forts and baking cakes, whacking baseballs and making sand castles--we're afforded in some respects, the opportunity to be our most human." VERDICT Full of fascinating ideas and information about the family structure and its history, this work is sure to be of strong interest to parents, in particular, as they look for meaning beyond the day to day. [See Prepub Alert, 8/12/13.]. Mindy Rhiger, Minneapolis. 320p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 08/12/2013 |
| Senior's book started out as a New York Magazine cover story that prompted incredible response and media coverage elsewhere. The book itself was featured on the 2013 BEA Editors Buzz Panel. All of which recommends your checking out Senior's discussion about parenthood today, which focuses on how parents are shaped by their children. The last 50 years have seen unprecedented changes in the parental role, and Senior draws on history, economics, psychology, and more to paint portraits of the crucial parent-child interaction. With a 75,000-copy first printing and an eight-city tour to Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. 320p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 11/04/2013 |
| In 2010, New York magazine published contributing editor Senior's feature of the same title with the telling subhead: "Why Parents Hate Parenting." Here, Senior analyzes how children affect their parents from birth through adolescence, attempting to understand why middle-class millennial parents find this to be a "high-cost/low reward activity." Three modern developments have complicated parenting: choice in family size and timing; flexible workplaces, with long(er) hours and inadequate sponsored childcare; and the transformation of the child's role from "useful" to "protected" status. Senior utilizes academic studies and survey data about sex, marriage, pregnancy, childhood, sleep loss, earning power; she also cites data about why women and men approach parenting differently, and she also quotes many noted parent-child experts along the way. Her interviews with parents participating in Early Childhood Family Education classes offer different parenting styles and scenarios, and Senior adds a personal dimension, taking a good look at herself and her peers. In the end, readers will hopefully see the parenting journey as more about the children and less about adult emotions, that children's behavior is culturally mediated, and that negotiating with a toddler is futile. While Jennifer Valenti's Why Have Kids? addressed unmet expectations versus daily reality, this book airs the "I love my kids; I hate my life" litany of parents who, statistically, spend more time with their kids than the previous two generations. Agent: Tina Bennett, WME. (Feb.). 320p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013. |
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9780062072221,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 02/02/2014 |
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