Alison Gopnik - on parenting, gardening and carpentry

Family name Gopnik. Funny indeed, even not being native Russian :-)

I have a lot of respect for Prof. Gopnik and I love this metaphor of hers, also used as her book's name, on parenting: gardener vs carpenter. However, as a researcher myself on child bilingualism, I have come to learn that people/parents have ideology, have 'baggage' - things that we believe partly due to our own past experiences, partly due to social influences, things that we see significance for our children's future, and therefore we want to pass down to them. Prof. Gopnik may see it as we want to control our children or shape them, but simply we want the very best for them, and therefore we want them to develop skills or knowledge in this or that particular area. Hence, I think this is highly debatable as to which is the 'best' parenting. As long as we love our children and we do our very best to care for them, it's all good, whether we are gardening or carpentering, or a bit of both.