The Unspoken Morality of Childhood: Family, Friendship, Self-Esteem and the Wisdom of the Everyday

Description

The Unspoken Morality of Childhood reflects the thoughts of a senior ethicist as she ponders the moral questions we all encounter in everyday life. Each essay describes a commonplace event: a child learning to read or asking to be quizzed on spelling, first graders bonding on playground swings, brothers talking on the way home from school, a young girl leaving for college. Monroe sensitively infuses these moments with a thoughtful tenderness that reveals the beauty in our daily routine and the wisdom all parents crave. Her reflections on the ethical issues raised as part of our daily lives lend valuable insight into critical moral topics: how nostalgia and love of home can be exploited by unscrupulous politicians who turn fear into political weapons that divide us but elect them. How forgiveness may not always be the best way to move on after a hurt. Moral imagination's unique ability to help us conceptualise our way out of seemingly intransigent problems. Agency, passion, unconditional love, and the painful growth that can accompany loss. Above all, Monroe highlights the tremendous power of identity and self-esteem and the recognition that we must honour the humanity in others in order to fully claim it in ourselves.

Kristen Renwick Monroe is the Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Irvine, where she serves as founding Director of the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics & Morality. She has published over 100 articles and 20 books, including four award-winning works on ethics and political psychology:The Heart of Altruism; The Hand of Compassion, Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide, and A Darkling Plain: Stories of Conflict and Humanity during War. An honors graduate of Smith College and the University of Chicago, Monroe has taught at SUNY Stony Brook, the University of British Columbia, NYU, Princeton, and Harvard. She is currently completing a trilogy on moral courage and a book on science and ethics.

"Kristen Monroe beautifully interweaves personal and intellectual autobiography, narrative and ethical theory in this highly readable and engaging collection. A prizewinning political scientist, a mother and a teacher of ethics, she shows vividly how the grand philosophical issues of ethics are experienced in the most practical and concrete areas of life." Helen Haste, Visiting Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, USA; Emeritus Professor of Psychology, The University of Bath, UK "Kristen Monroe lives her values and they animate these writings with compassion and moral vision. Through these stories she shows us a way to support our children, learn from them and build a more caring world." -Heather Booth, Social-Political Activist "Kristen Monroe is a wise and generous person, who meets experiences with persistent humor and ever-increasing insight. The Unspoken Morality of Childhood reflects and refracts her fine scholarship, committed teaching and deep interdisciplinarity. As did I, each reader will find a particular resonance in one or another chapter. -Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, USA; Past President of the American Political Science Association