Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood

Description

All parents want their children to be happy ? but no parent knows how to guarantee it. Now this groundbreaking book explores the ways in which parents can influence their children?s happiness, providing a positive framework for emotional growth. Happiness is simultaneously the most sought after and the most elusive human property. But it is also poorly understood. Making Happy People breaks new ground in two ways: by offering a scientific perspective on a subject often dominated by philosophers, artists and self-help gurus; and by looking at the origins of happiness in the individual. Essential reading for everyone who wants to be happier, or to make others happy, this remarkable book combines the latest research with indispensable advice to illuminate a little explored subject of large importance.

Paul Martin was educated at Cambridge University and at Stanford University, California, where he was Harkness Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences. He lectured and researched in behavioural biology at Cambridge University, and was a Fellow of Wolfson College, before leaving academia to pursue other interests including science writing. His previous books include The Sickening Mind and Counting Sheep.

In Making Happy People, Paul Martin proves himself a man of kindness and blithe optimism whose delightful diktats would be of benefit to us all. Mail on Sunday