The Gardener and the Carpenter

Child Psychologist Alison Gopnik in conversation with Dacher Keltner

Alison Gopnik is one of the world’s leading child psychologists, and author of several bestselling and critically-acclaimed books that take us into the minds of babies and children. In her latest thought-provoking book, The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship between Parents and Children, she shatters the myth of “good parenting.” She shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. She maintains that children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. She appears in conversation with social psychologist Dacher Keltner.