CHILDMYTHS

The "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption. See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com

Friday, February 25, 2011

Attachment and "Bonding": The Mainstream and Some Eddies

Psychologists and clinical social workers will be surprised at my bothering to talk about the subject of this post, but if they look back ov...

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Comparing Families: "Between" and "Within"

A person commenting on this blog recently complained about the suggestion she felt I’d made, that adoptive and non-adoptive families are “j...

Monday, February 14, 2011

Is It Kin, or Is It Skin? Conclusions About Skin-to-Skin Contact for Low-Birth-Weight Babies

The Huffington Post blogger Jennifer Lauck has done a piece arguing that separation of very young babies from their mothers is traumatic for...

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Adult Adoptee Unhappiness: An Alternative to Primal Wounds

Much discussion over the last several months has been devoted to the Primal Wound idea. A number of adult adoptees have stated that because ...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Cross about the Cross-Crawl

The myth of the cross-crawl has been with us for at least 50 years now, and I for one am tired of the claims that are made about it. This be...

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Clever Hans Rides Again: Equestrian Therapy for RAD?

Do you remember Clever Hans (or Kluge Hans without translation)? This early- 20th- century performing horse almost certainly turned up in yo...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Parole for an Adoptive Mother: Whose Fault Was the Child's Death?

The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole has decided to parole Jennete Killpack, who was convicted in 2006 of the child abuse homicide of her 4-...

Friday, January 21, 2011

Measure for Measure: Rival Ways of Knowing

In recent months, I seem to have been embroiled in a number of arguments that basically turn on issues about knowing--- how we know, and how...

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Attachment, the New Imperialistic Schema?

Several decades ago, Sandra Bem, a social psychologist interested in gender issues, referred to gender as an “imperialistic schema”. By this...

Monday, January 17, 2011

Practice Babies, Wet Nurses, Kibbutzim,and Boarder Babies: Are Humans "Omnicarous"?

A lot of concern is being expressed on various blogs about the history of “practice babies”, as described in Lisa Grunwald’s novel The Irres...

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Prenatal Listening: It's Complicated

A New Yorker “Annals of Psychology” article by the columnist-pundit David Brooks, entitled “Social Animal”, appeared in the Jan. 17, 2011 i...

Friday, January 14, 2011

Autism, Vaccines, and the Wakefield Study: III: Why Jenny McCarthy Still Believes

Over the last ten days, two articles by the investigative reporter Brian Deer, published in the British Medical Journal , have shown that th...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Autism, Vaccines, and the Wakefield Study: II. The Apparent Motives

In my last post, I described some important reasons for the rejection of Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 paper that claimed a causal link between th...

Autism,Vaccines, and the Wakefield Study: I. Reasons to Reject Wakefield's Report

Early in 2010, there was an excited reaction to the retraction by the British journal Lancet of an article published by Andrew Wakefield a...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Mothers Superior: Does Amy Chua Have the Secret to Child-Rearing Success?

“Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”: this is the startlingly confident title of a piece by Amy Chua in the Jan.8 Wall Street Journal . And, i...

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Urban Legend About the Russian Orphans

I thought I would have a peaceful breakfast this snowy morning, January 9, 2011, with the Times Sunday Styles section. What could be in ther...

Saturday, January 8, 2011

To http://etfamilies.websitetoolbox.com: A message

Dear etfamilies administrators: A number of readers have come to my blog from yours over the last several days, so I went to have a look at ...

Saturday, January 1, 2011

When Restraint Should Be "Prescription Only"

Those of us who from time to time speak out against the use of inappropriate physical restraint of children can expect certain criticisms in...

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About Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mercer

Jean Mercer: Jean Mercer has a Ph.D in Psychology from Brandeis University, earned when that institution was 20 years old (you do the math). She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College, where for many years she taught developmental psychology, research methods, perception, and history of psychology. Since about 2000 her focus has been on potentially dangerous child psychotherapies, and she has published several related books and a number of articles in professional journals. Her CV can be seen at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/12/curriculum-vitae-jean.mercer-richard.html.

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