Books I've been reading

Well, I've read, in fairly quick succession: The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff
and The Idle Parent by Tom Hodgkinson and Winning Parent, Winning Child by Jan Fortune-Wood which was quite an interesting juxtaposition.
I know many people Tom Hodgkinson's style rather annoying, but as I truly think his earlier book How to be Free should be required reading for everyone, I think I would recommend it, taken with a pinch of salt. It does sound like he enjoys a bit of lying down in the sun with a beer in his hand while the kids run wild, but, hey, that's not such a bad ambition. His 'message' is quite similar to Deborah Jackson's in Letting Go as Children Grow, ie, not to get in your children's way as they go about their business, only with more drinking and ukelele-playing. It is also similar to Liedloff's account of how the Yequana Indians treat their children (and Hodgkinson recommends The Continuum Concept). I enjoyed Hodgkinson's book without it really telling me anything new, and some bits I disagreed with. But I reckon he wouldn't be too bothered about that if you met him in person. He comes across as quite affable.
I was surprised that I didn't really like The Continuum Concept. Having read many books based on its ground-breaking parenting methods, and agreed with many of the concepts within Attachment Parenting, based partly on Liedloff's suggestions (such as long-term breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and baby-wearing), I actually found this original work rather annoying. I found her style awkward and I wasn't at all sure that she had anywhere near enough evidence to back up some of the claims and assumptions she made. Other people (including Deborah Jackson, Margot Sunderland and Sue Gerhardt) have since provided plenty of hard evidence for the benefits of these things and were the basis for my adopting them, as well as my own instincts backing them, but the evidence presented in The Continuum Concept only supported her assertion that something was different about this tribe compared to Western culture - it could have been the diet, the weather, the environment, the lack of pollution, a combination of these things that made this difference, not necessarily the way children were brought up.
I also was rather uncomfortable about the apparently idyllic and 'natural' lifestyle of Liedloff's Indians (a criticism which was incidentally shared by Jan Fortune-Wood) - in that their culture was patriarchal and seemed to suppress any innovation or deviation from their culture's norms. I wondered what happened to gay people in their culture, or those who did not want or could not have children? The whole set-up seemed to be purely consisting of extended families, with women doing repetitive domestic work and men hunting. I also wondered what happened to anyone who did transgress the norms of this society? In my reading of other anthropological works it seems that the threat of being cast out of the tribe is a rather effective one in this kind of culture, and keeps people toeing the line rather well.
I was also rather ambivalent about Winning Parent, Winning Child. This book is about the consensual approach to bringing up children, also called autonomous or Taking Children Seriously (TCS). Obviously I agree that bringing up children consensually as much as possible is a good thing, and should be everyone's aim. However, I don't go as far as Jan Fortune-Wood in this book, in that I *do* have a bottom line past which I will not be pushed, as far as children are concerned, and I also *do* consider myself to be in charge. We don't go in for punishment in our household, and we do a lot of talking, explaining, reasoning and finding solutions, but there are also some (loving) rules. Fortune-Wood asserts that coercion of *any* kind, including the approaches I have just mentioned, damages children, possibly beyond repair. I find this very depressing, even though she presents no evidence for it. She also asserts that there are always solutions to every problem, even if they are only theoretical. Call me mad, but I don't find a theoretical solution remotely helpful. And now I feel a total failure in every situation in our family in which I cannot find a solution. Obviously my creative thinking is limited, as she says. And maybe I have damaged my children, but they (like adults, in my experience) are not always rational beings who will engage with problem solution. Sometimes, they are selfish, angry, grumpy children who only want what they want and will not budge an inch. Are mine the only ones? Surely not...
However, I do also recommend this book as it's always good to reminded what we should be aiming for, and challenged in our thinking.