The Shelter of Each Other by Mary Pipher – Very Reassuring
Posted in Amazons Hot Daily Deals on Sep 22nd, 2009
The Shelter of Each Other by Mary Pipher – Save 32% Today!
Why Buy A The Shelter of Each Other by Mary Pipher?
In The Shelter of Each Other, Mary Pipher does for the American family what she did for adolescent girls and their parents in her bestselling book Reviving Ophelia: she opens our eyes wide to the desperate realities we are facing and shows us a way out. Drawing on the fascinating stories of families rich and poor, angry and despairing, religious and skeptical, and probing deep into her own family memories and experiences, Pipher clears a path to the strength and energy at the core of family life. Wise, compassionate, and impassioned, The Shelter of Each Other challenges each of us to face the truth about ourselves and to find the courage to protect, nurture, and revivify the families we cherish.
A canny mix of optimism and practicality gives Piphers fans a way to resist the worst of the culture around them and substitute the best of themselves.
*Newsweek
Eye-opening . . . Piphers simple solutions for survival in this family-unfriendly culture are peppered throughout the heart-wrenching and uplifting stories of several of her client
families. . . . Highly readable, passionate.
*San Francisco Chronicle
Compelling.
*USA Today
Features
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
- Condition: NEW
- ISBN13: 9781594483721
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Over 20 Five Star Customer Reviews On Amazon!
Very Reassuring
This is such a great book for parents raising children in the modern world to read. With all the messages we get about how easy it is to screw up our kids, this one shows how to set a good foundation. Also good I think for adults trying to heal relationships with their birth families.
Timely and Important: A Must Read For All Parents
I picked up this book after reading the equally important “Reviving Ophelia.” “The Shelter of Each Other” is an important guidebook on how to get your family back from the clutches of American junk media, job stress and day care. This book is ungently needed by any parent with factory farmed kids who spend their days with nannies, in day care, and in front of the tube watching garbage videos. But it is equally useful to involved parents who want to be one step ahead of the corrupting and damaging influences of life in America today. Read it and heal.
The Value of Family
In this book, Mary Pipher identifies problems that the American family faces today which are new and different from those faced by previous generations. She states that families are frequently blamed for these cultural problems, but in fact, it is the culture itself which has become the problem, and families are our haven in the storm, our most cherished institution, and our “last great hope”. She describes the many ways American culture has changed, such that nowadays, children grow up in a “consumption-oriented, electronic community that is teaching them very different values from those we say we value”. She reminds us that a healthy culture is one where its members are free to grow and develop personally and encouraged to work hard for the betterment of others. She describes the destruction of the protective walls around children, and the concurrent destruction of the elevated position of adults in today’s “electronic village”. Problems today are internal to the family, who struggle to coordinate schedules so they can share a meal together before again heading separate directions. Years ago, the enemies of the family were external, such as poverty, disease, or natural disaster, and were faced bravely when members of each family united to help one another.The author maintains that psychologists have sometimes done great harm to families under the guise of doing providing good life solutions. She is open and honest about her profession, recognizing that while some are saviors, healers, and teachers to their clients, others irresponsibly or ignorantly dispense wrong advice, causing more pain, strife, and sickness than the clients came in with. Pipher reconnects therapy to responsibility and advises that psychologists apply theories and treatments that are appropriate to the time, place, culture, and personality of the people involved. She reiterates the importance for families to be supported, protected, and validated by professionals, so that by connecting people, in families, extended families, schools, and eventually communities, people’s most basic need – love – will be met, and they can then find hope for the future.
She talks about the accountability that comes along with close relationships, those relationships of longevity, where you know the person’s family, where they live, where they work, where they worship, and still remember the dog they got in fifth grade. Instead of living life with real people, more people nowadays live fantasy lives, caring more about celebrity marriages than they do the people in their community. She quotes George S. Trow’s writing: “We are becoming more childish. We’re falling out of the world of history into the world of demographics where we count everything and value nothing.” Pipher asserts that the relationship between children and their teachers is not an incidental relationship, but rather is “the central component of their learning”. She contends that human development occurs within the context of real relationships, because we learn from those whom we love.
She doesn’t just provide us with a laundry list of problems, but also provides solutions at several levels. She provides answers to why the status quo cannot continue, if we really want to make changes for the betterment of society. She then offers strategies for therapists who want to make a significant difference in the outcome for their clients by providing quality family therapy. Furthermore, she shares survival solutions for the lay person who is reading the book. These solutions tell us what essential qualities should be included to ensure that children develop optimally. She expands that idea to talk about connecting families together, and then, to building community.
Reading about her grandparents, the Page family, was delicious. Although it is evident that their lives held hardship as well as joy, they are so real that they seem larger than life. As in everything, Pipher provides practical advice, for example, describing how the Bible gave the family a common well of knowledge and language, as well as providing answers to hard questions about life, making sense of their individual existences in the light of a bigger picture and much larger purpose ordained from above. She also details the values that were reinforced universally at home, at church, and at school, where folks were more concerned about your character than your psyche. Hard work was part of family life, and while physical labor was shared by all, so were the benefits: “calves branded, kraut chopped and put in jars, gardens weeded and hogs butchered”. Consumption of goods was regarded to be an undesirable necessity, certainly not a lifestyle. Happiness was not the goal of life, but rather, making a positive contribution of your time, your talents, and doing what was right.
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