It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (Hardcover) | Released: 18 Jan 1996

This work shows that how children develop, and what they need in order to do so successfully, is inextricably bound up with the culture in which they live has developed. Royalties of the author's earnings will be donated to charity. Bookswagon.com Review The First Lady, a longtime child advocate, expresses her concerns for the children of today's world and offers her ideas for developing our society into one that values children's unique contributions. From the Publisher For more than twenty-five years, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has made children her passion and her cause. Her experience with children has strengthened her conviction that how children develop and what they need to succeed is inextricably entwined with the society in which they live and how well it sustains and supports its families and individuals. In other words, it takes a village to raise a child. This book chronicles her quest-both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public-to discover how we can make our society into the kind of village that enable children to grow into able, caring, resilient adults. It is time, Mrs. Clinton believes, to acknowledge that we have to make some changes for children's sake. Advances in technology and the global economy along with other developments in society have brought us much good, but they have also stressed the fabric of family life, leaving us and our children poorer in many ways - physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. She doesn't believe that we should, or can, turn back the clock. False nostalgia for "family values" is no solution. Nor is it useful to make an all-purpose bogeyman or savior of "government." But by looking honestly at the condition of our children, be sifting the past for clues to the structure that once bound us together, by identifying places where our "village" is flourishing, and, most important, be listening to the children themselves, we can begin to create for our children the better tomorrow they deserve. About the Author Hillary Rodham Clinton is America's First Lady. A longtime child advocate, she lives in the White House with the President and their daughter, Chelsea. This is her first book. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. It Takes a Village We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results. HERMAN MELVILLE Children are not rugged individualists. They depend on the adults they know and on thousands more who make decisions every day that affect their well-being. All of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, are responsible for deciding whether our children are raised in a nation that doesn't just espouse family values but values families and children. I have spent much of the past twenty-five years working to improve the lives of children. My work has taught me that they need more of our time, energy, and resources. But no experience brought home the lesson as vividly as becoming a mother myself. When Chelsea Victoria Clinton lay in my arms for the first time, I was overwhelmed by the love and responsibility I felt for her. Despite all the books I had read, all the children I had studied and advocated for, nothing had prepared me for the sheer miracle of her being. For the first time, I understood the words of the writer Elizabeth Stone: "Making the decision to have a child -- it's wondrous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body." Bill and I had wanted to start a family immediately after we married, in 1975, but we were not having much luck. In 1979, we scheduled an appointment to visit a fertility clinic right after a long-awaited vacation. Lo and behold, I got pregnant during that vacation. (I have often remarked to my husband that we might have had more children if we had taken more