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Please Yell at My Kids

What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You About Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind

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Contributors

By Marina Lopes

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$30.00

Price

$39.00 CAD

Acclaimed journalist Marina Lopes travels the world to learn how diverse cultures embrace communal parenting, bringing home practical strategies for American parents on how to stop doing it all, reimagine their communities, and build their own village.

Parenting in America is notoriously challenging: no federally supported parental leave, a lack of mental health support, a crushing combination of workplace pressure and aspirational parental perfection, and the fresh hell that is the playgroup Facebook page. But what if there was a better way?
      The simple fact is that parenting looks wildly different across nations. In Please Yell at My Kids, journalist Marina Lopes travels the globe, learning from parents in Singapore, Brazil, Mozambique, Malaysia, Sweden, China, and more to provide practical, actionable ways to reimagine parenting in America. At the heart of many global approaches to parenting lies one simple and not-so-simple element: community. In America, parenting is, at best, a dual mission. But globally, parenthood is more often a team sport played in the center of a community that helps, supports, and occasionally drives you up the wall. What can we learn from Brazilian birth parties, Singaporean grandparents, and Danish babies sleeping soundly outside of coffee shops? And how can that be integrated into the lives of American readers, even if we can’t hop on a plane and wing our way to the land of paid parental leave?
     From guiding readers on how to define their own non-negotiable values to navigating tricky conversations with their in-laws, Please Yell at My Kids empowers parents to create a supportive community of care, rediscover the joy in parenting, and raise resilient, independent children—without having to go it alone.

  • "Please Yell at My Kids is an eye-opening and insightful read that challenges traditional parenting norms. With practical advice and global perspectives, it beautifully demonstrates the benefits of a community-centered approach to parenting. This book is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to enrich their parenting journey by embracing balance, community, and fun. I highly recommend it!"
    Iben Dissing Sandahl, author of the international bestseller The Danish Way Of Parenting
  • “What a pleasure to read someone smart and funny who is fed up with a culture of parenting (spoiler alert: ours) that's leaving parents with no great ways to make the whole process more fun, social and successful. When Marina tells you about what other cultures are doing, some of the ideas are going to make you go, "OMG!" but others, "OMG—let's start doing that TODAY!" Mix and match these time-tested norms and you may just have a much easier, happier time raising your kids.”
    Lenore Skenazy, President, Let Grow, and author of Free-Range Kids
  • “We no longer have to parent aloneI>Please Yell at My Kids showcases how parenting can be done together to make our children happier and parenting more enjoyable.”
    Leah Ruppanner, sociologist, podcaster, author of the forthcoming Drained

On Sale
Apr 22, 2025
Page Count
288 pages
Publisher
Balance
ISBN-13
9780306834417

Marina Lopes

About the Author

Marina Lopes is a Brazilian- American journalist who has written about feminism, caregiving, and motherhood across five continents. From 2016 through 2020, Marina covered Brazil for the Washington Post.
     Her reporting took her from the remote corners of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, where she interviewed female shamans challenging gender norms in their tribes, to Rio’s gang-controlled favelas, where she spoke to mothers who lost their children to gun violence. In Brazil’s Zika-infected northeast, she chronicled the devastation of the epidemic on families living in poverty. Her article on the spread of the Venezuelan diaspora in South America was nominated by the Washington Post for a Pulitzer Prize. She was also a 2019 recipient of an International Women’s Media Foundation Grant for her coverage of sex trafficking rings in the Amazon. Her 2018 series on how gay Brazilians confronted the rise of homophobia in Bolsonaro’s Brazil was nominated for a GLAAD award for outstanding newspaper article.
     Before joining the Post, she was a correspondent for Reuters in Mozambique. Her work has been published by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the BBC, PBS, Vice, and others. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.
 

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