The Gardener and the Carpenter

The Gardener and the Carpenter - book review

A book about parenting, sort of… When you become a parent, inevitably, you’ll probably read about it. You’ll say you don’t care about these books, and you’ll be filled with fear that you’re somehow doing something wrong. The way I interpreted it, at least, this one basically tells you to “Get over it!”

Shaping or Letting Them Flower?

Its title might seem odd, but it’s actually a pretty interesting theory about two ways of being a parent and caring for your children.

The Gardener

The gardener is the person who cares for their flowers, provides the best they can, and lets them flourish.

They do the best they can, but there are many factors interfering with their garden. They know they can’t control everything and do not expect a precise result or outcome at the end of their task.

The Carpenter

The carpenter is the new parenting model that most parents try to adopt when caring for their children, and Gopnik compares it to a carpenter who selects the material and shapes it precisely the way they want.

Does that sound like a child to you?

Science and Observation

The whole book is about experience and observation, scientific experiments, and the author’s own experience as a mother and a grandmother. Different perspectives from the same person can bring surprisingly interesting results.

Practice Freedom

She leads us to think about childhood, about our children, and about our own childhood, and what we felt back then.

She tries to take away some of our fears and uncertainty, making us feel more powerful as parents, even though she insists that we can’t predict what our child will become, no matter what. They are human beings with free will, and we can’t model them; we can only try to become a model ourselves.

She gives us back what the new parenting model took from us in the first place: freedom.

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