Γονιός, Κυνηγός, Τροφοσυλλέκτης
Michaeleen Doucleff, 2021
★ 4.12 from 40k ratings on Goodreads
A science reporter, humbled by her three-year-old, travels to Maya, Hadza and Inuit families to learn what parenting advice from the West has been missing. A science reporter’s brisk, plainspoken account of learning from Maya, Hadza and Inuit parents, mixing family hope with occasional unease.
Feels like hope, wonder and unease. About family, society and death.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want practical parenting ideas and enjoy a reporter narrating her own family struggles. Be aware that some readers find the cultural comparisons overgeneralized, the evidence thin, and the discipline examples shaming or manipulative.
Why read it
It offers a candid look at how different cultures handle children and gives you concrete questions about your own assumptions, without pretending the answers are simple.
A page from the book
The fear that you are a bad parent, and the other explanation.
Απέστρεψα το βλέμμα μου από τα αεροπλάνα κι έριξα μια ματιά στους Αμερικανούς τουρίστες που ήταν καθισμένοι απέναντί μου και ετοιμάζονταν να επιβιβαστούν στο αεροπλάνο της επιστροφής στο Σαν Φρανσίσκο. Και τότε σκέφτηκα: Μπορεί να αντιμετωπίζω τόσα πολλά προβλήματα με τη Ρόζι όχι επειδή είμαι κακή μαμά, αλλά επειδή δεν είχα κανέναν να μου δείξει πώς να είμαι καλή μαμά. Μήπως ο πολιτισμός μας έχει ξεχάσει ποιος είναι ο βέλτιστος τρόπος ανατροφής των παιδιών; What readers say
Readers disagree sharply: many appreciate the practical parenting ideas and find them useful, while others object to cultural overgeneralization, weak evidence, and shaming or manipulative discipline examples.
Michaeleen Doucleff.Doucleff is a science journalist who spent years reporting on infectious disease for NPR before turning her reporting on parenting to hunter-gatherer communities.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Γονιός, Κυνηγός, Τροφοσυλλέκτης for me?
- You may like it if you want practical parenting ideas and enjoy a reporter narrating her own family struggles. Be aware that some readers find the cultural comparisons overgeneralized, the evidence thin, and the discipline examples shaming or manipulative.
- What is Γονιός, Κυνηγός, Τροφοσυλλέκτης like?
- A science reporter’s brisk, plainspoken account of learning from Maya, Hadza and Inuit parents, mixing family hope with occasional unease. Feels like hope, wonder and unease. About family, society and death.
- What should I read after Γονιός, Κυνηγός, Τροφοσυλλέκτης?
- If you liked Γονιός, Κυνηγός, Τροφοσυλλέκτης, try I'm Glad My Mom Died (Jennette McCurdy), Educated (Tara Westover) and If You Tell (Gregg Olsen).
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I’m becoming an angry person with no tolerance for anyone. I’m aware of this shift and yet have no desire to change it. If anything, I want it. It’s armor. It’s easier to be angry than to feel to pain underneath it.
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What an apology can build after it has arrived too late.
You were my child. I should have protected you. I lived a lifetime in the moment I read those lines, a life that was not the one I had actually lived. I became a different person, who remembered a different childhood. I didn’t understand the magic of those words then, and I don’t understand it now. I know only this: that when my mother told me she had not been the mother to me that she wished she’d been, she became that mother for the first time.
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