REINVENTING CHILDHOOD: Raising and Educating Children in a Changing World.

REINVENTING CHILDHOOD: Raising and Educating Children in a Changing World. David Elkind. Rosemont, NJ: Modern Learning Press, 1998. 188pp. $19.95. Reinventing Childhood takes a sobering look at the multiple societal changes that are affecting children. Noted child psychologist David Elkind compares the experience of being a child during the modern era (the 1950s) with that of being a child during the postmodern era (the 1960s onward). He posits that children are being forced to grow up too fast and that their needs are no longer given precedence in the family. Consequently, today's families are raising a generation of angry, lonely, and displaced children.

Elkind contrasts this situation to the idealized family of the 1950s, when children were cared for and home was a haven, a place of peace and rest from the harshness of factory or office. Now, home is a place where each member's needs take precedence over communal family activities. Families seldom eat meals together, and the home becomes a kind of train station--with people coming and going. Elkind describes postmodern parents as living hurried, distracted lives, with little time to teach those rules of behavior so desperately needed in school culture. "The child viewed as innocent in the modern era has been reinvented as competent--ready and able to deal with all of life's vicissitudes in the postmodern era" (p. 15), including divorce, violence, and televised sexuality.

Elkind sounds a serious alarm that concerned parents and educators need to hear. He concludes that families who value their children need to give them the tools to survive in an increasingly stressful, complex culture. Reviewed by Jan Richards, Doctoral student/Adjunct, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA