David Lees/Corbis (1957)In The New York Times Book Review, Rebecca Traister reviews Dalton Conley’s “Parentology: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Science of Raising Children but Were Too Exhausted to Ask.” Ms. Traister writes:
Conley describes himself as a “freak” whose parenting decisions are based on “flexibility and fluidity, attention to (often counterintuitive, myth-busting) research. . . . Trial and error. Hypothesis revision and more experimentation about what works. In other words, the scientific method.” He lets his children curse at him; he tells them they’re in special education classes because of the better student-teacher ratio; they camp out around a hot plate while their apartment is renovated. He is a wild and crazy guy.
Except that he has also spent his career “studying traditional measures of socioeconomic success” and is therefore not interested in any “hippy-dippy perspective where all I want for them is to be quote-unquote ‘happy.’ ” Conley has “long been obsessed with societal ‘merit badges’ . . . little markers that I was on the right path to please my elders. And my hopes for my kids were no different.”
On this week’s podcast, Ms. Traister talks about “Parentology”; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Amy Finnerty discusses four new books about New York City history; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.