Robert A. LeVine

Sarah LeVine

When it comes to parenting, more isn't always better-but it is always more tiring In Japan, a boy sleeps in his parents' bed until age ten, but still shows independence in all other areas of his life. In rural India, toilet training begins one month after infants are born and is accomplished with little fanfare. In Paris, parents limit the amount of agency they give their toddlers. In America, parents grant them ever more choices, independence, and attention. Given our approach to parenting, is it any surprise that American parents are too frequently exhausted? Over the course of nearly fifty years, Robert and Sarah LeVine have conducted a groundbreaking, worldwide study of how families work. They have consistently found that children can be happy and healthy in a wide variety of conditions, not just the effort-intensive, cautious environment so many American parents drive themselves crazy trying to create. While there is always another news article or scientific fad proclaiming the importance of some factor or other, it's easy to miss the bigger picture: that children are smarter, more resilient, and more independent than we give them credit for. Do Parents Matter? is an eye-opening look at the world of human nurture, one with profound lessons for the way we think about our families.

Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax

Do Parents Matter?

David N. Gellner

LeVine and Gellner describe in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years.

The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal

Rebuilding Buddhism

Sarah E. LeVine

Clara Sunderland Correa

"Fascinating ethnography focuses on ways in which urbanization and rapid social change have affected family life and women at various life stages, including childhood, adolescence, marriage, childbearing years, and old age. Based on interviews with 15 working-class women of distinct generational groups from a tenement neighborhood in Cuernavaca. Interviews were conducted semiweekly over a one-year span (1984-85). Additional chapter discusses women's roles and family relations during the 1990s"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

Women and Social Change in Urban Mexico

Dolor Y Alegría

Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. With its focus on the austere figure of the monk and the biography of the historical Buddha, and more recently with its emphasis on individualizing meditation and on gender equality, Theravada Buddhism contrasts sharply with the highly ritualized Tantric Buddhism traditionally practiced in the Kathmandu Valley. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years. At the same time it explores the impact of the Theravada movement and what its gradual success has meant for Buddhism, for society, and for men and women in Nepal.

Sarah LeVine

Books

Your next favorite book is out there