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minhhai's Reviews > Kiss Me!: How to Raise Your Children with Love

Kiss Me! by Carlos  González
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it was ok
bookshelves: english, non-fictions

Below are my comments on the first half of the book, because I did not have enough patience to finish the other half.

In the first 20 pages or so, the author attempts to clarify the stance of child educators and of himself. I really appreciate the effort, since many authors do not detail what assumptions they have made in their arguments. However, the author somehow mis-presents his standpoint. He pledges that he would "defend children and mothers", but that is half true. His actual stance is rather naturalistic: he believes that anything associated with nature or primitive lives is good, and vice versa, most of the modern things are "unnatural", unneccessary or even bad. In defending his arguments throughout the book, he always says things like: because people in primitive societies do so, because apes/monkeys do so, that must be appropriate. It is up to you to trust his logic.

Later he continuously "debunks" current beliefs/methods on child education, using mostly his "naturalistic logic". No scientific evidence is used to support his views. His arguments are based on comparisons between human and other animals, in the way that advocates his naturalism. For example, to defend children's helplessness, much more than monkeys, he compares monkeys and apes then argues that we are more like apes than monkeys, therefore babies are helpless. Ten pages later when he tries to defend the baby-mother attachment, he uses monkeys as an analogy!!! All of his comparisons and analogies are inconsistent in favor of his claims. He then ends up with an "ideal" method: hold the baby all the time, feed it several times per hour, sleep together until it is 10 years old, etc. He doesn't ever account for the mother's physical and mental ability, the housework in modern life (you need to go to grocery and to cook foods, not simply eat apples and bananas like apes or monkeys!), the learning and adapting ability of babies.

At the middle of the book, I realized that the purpose of his "method" (if any) is not raising a well-balanced human being, but essentially to "feel good". All of his suggestions would lead us to short-term gratification, and he advocates that as an ultimately good result. In some sense, he does "defend children and mothers" as he claims at the beginning of the book, and his core advice is "do whatever you want, whatever makes you feel good, need not care about anything else". He is also a big fan of fictions. All the quotes below the chapter titles are from fictions whose context and implication are ambiguous. He cites fictions, recommend readers to read fictions to learn how to raise a kid! Many times he makes use of readers' emotion, depicts strict parents as evil.

To sum up, this is a non-scientific book. More than that, it is not about child raising or education. It is all about how to satisfy yourselves and feel good, even for a moment. It is not about fact, it's all about emotion. There are no trustful evidence but full of fictional anecdotes and bullshit.
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Reading Progress

May 1, 2016 – Started Reading
June 1, 2016 – Finished Reading
July 22, 2016 – Shelved
July 22, 2016 – Shelved as: english
July 22, 2016 – Shelved as: non-fictions

Comments Showing 1-1 of 1 (1 new)

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Inma At the beginning of the book he says that he is giving his personal opinion about raising children. I agree that he doesn't really defend the mother but, to be fair, the children are usually not taken into account that much... On another hand... I feel sad that we need science instead emotions to learn to raise our children... In the end, is a relationship, and relationship should be based in emotions.


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