Parenting Experts No doubt about it—parenting advice abounds. From stacks of childcare manuals to “pearls of wisdom” from Great-Aunt Ruby, today’s parents are drowning in advice. Self-proclaimed childcare experts have published enough literature to make your head spin. But who has time to sort through the dizzying amount of information? Here is a brief summary of ten of the most notable parenting experts of our time.
G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) Nurture, nurture, and nurture some more! Hall, the first American psychologist, proposed that good behavior in children is brought about by nurturing them in a manner appropriate to their age and stage of development. L. Emmett Holt (1855–1924) Avoid sentimentality! Holt, one of the early presidents of the American Pediatric Society and a contemporary of Hall, wrote the popular tome The Care and Feeding of Children (1917), which spells out a very strict dietary plan and urges parents to avoid spoiling their children through sentimental parenting. John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) Stimulus-response. Watson is the father of the Behavioral School of Psychology. He believed that all living creatures operate under the system of stimulus-response, and it was by using that system that behaviorists systemized the raising of children. Watson believed that the basic emotions in infants are love, rage, and fear. He developed ways to use these emotions to teach children to exhibit good behaviors and eradicate bad ones. Arnold Gesell (1880–1961) Milestones. Gesell was the first psychologist to chart child development through assigning age-appropriate milestones. See Your One-Year-Old, and the rest of the year-by-year Gesell Institute series by Louise Bates Ames.
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