Reviews for Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy

The average rating for Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-06-13 00:00:00 Michael Pottinger Brilliantly funny and fantastically refreshing. Few of my favorites jokes from the book: First, a marriage-broker was defending the girl he had proposed against the young man's protests. "I don't care for the mother-in-law", said the latter. She's a disagreeable, stupid person. But after all you're not marrying the mother-in-law. What you want is her daughter." "Yes, but she's not young any longer, and she's not precisely a beauty." "No matter. If she's neither young nor beautiful she'll be all the more faithful to you." "But she hasn't much money." "Who's talking about money? Are you marrying money then? After all it's a wife that you want." "But she's got a hunchback too." "Well, what do you want? Isn't she to have a single fault?"' Second, 'The bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker on one side and whispered his remonstrances: "Why have you brought me here?" he asked reproachfully. "She's ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes . . ." - "You needn't lower your voice", interrupted the broker, "she's deaf as well."' Third, 'The Schadchen had assured the suitor that the girl's father was no longer living. After the betrothal it emerged that the father was still alive and was serving a prison sentence. The suitor protested to the Schadchen, who replied: "Well, what did I tell you? You surely don't call that living?"' Fourth, 'The would-be bridegroom complained that the bride had one leg shorter than the other and limped. The Schadchen contradicted him: "You're wrong. Suppose you marry a woman with healthy, straight limbs! What do you gain from it? You never have a day's security that she won't fall down, break a leg and afterwards be lame all her life. And think of the suffering then, the agitation, and the doctor's bill! But if you take this one, that can't happen to you. Here you have a fait accompli.' Fifth, 'The bridegroom was paying his first visit to the bride's house in the company of the broker, and while they were waiting in the salon for the family to appear, the broker drew attention to a cupboard with glass doors in which the finest set of silver plate was exhibited. "There! Look at that! You can see from these things how rich these people are." - "But", asked the suspicious young man, "mightn't it be possible that these fine things were only collected for the occasion - that they were borrowed to give an impression of wealth?" - He replied, "Who do you think would lend these people anything?"' Sixth, a Marxist joke, It is instructive to compare this joke with another that is very close to it in meaning: 'A man who had taken to drink supported himself by tutoring in a small town. His vice gradually became known, however, and as a result he lost most of his pupils. A friend was commissioned to urge him to mend his ways. "Look, you could get the best tutoring in the town if you would give up drinking. So do give it up!" "Who do you think you are?" was the indignant reply. "I do tutoring so that I can drink. Am I to give up drinking so that I can get tutoring?"' Seventh, on capitalism, 'A horse-dealer was recommending a saddle-horse to a customer. "If you take this horse and get on it at four in the morning you'll be at Pressburg by half-past six." - "What should I be doing in Pressburg at halfpast six in the morning?"' And few more gags on political economy, where is the economy hidden in such jokes as 'Rousseau - roux et sot' or 'Antigone - antik? oh nee'. 'An impoverished individual borrowed 25 florins from a prosperous acquaintance, with many asseverations of his necessitous circumstances. The very same day his benefactor met him again in a restaurant with a plate of salmon mayonnaise in front of him. The benefactor reproached him: "What? You borrow money from me and then order yourself salmon mayonnaise? Is that what you've used my money for?" "I don't understand you", replied the object of the attack; "if I haven't any money I can't eat salmon mayonnaise, and if I have some money I mustn't eat salmon mayonnaise. Well, then, when am I to eat salmon mayonnaise?"' It could as well be possible that Ludwig Wittgenstein must have Freud (this book) in mind when he famously put, "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."

Review # 2 was written on 2016-03-04 00:00:00 Carlos Hurtado 2.5 stars. When the introducer in his introduction writes something like, "Besides, readers of his [Freud's] Joke book who have been uneasily conscious of the persistent failures of understanding prompted by such mismatches are entitled to know that their stupidity is not to blame (or at any rate is shared by a fellow-reader). In reality, as we have seen, a factor that obstructs any easy understanding of the text is that the terms evolved by Freud in his analysis of dreams cannot have the same meaning when applied to jokes. But he writes as if they can." the reader knows she may be in trouble, and if she choses to proceed, perhaps her stupidity will not, in this instance, be so pardonable. If this book was a joke-and in a few but rather unfunny and yet major ways it is-its punchline would be (you might have guessed): 'your mother's vagina'; and if Freud could just be so concise, he'd have himself a joke that might elicit a laugh-that is the out-loud kind everyone is talking about these days-from which the reader could better follow his explication. As it is, the enterprise suffers from a few critical issues: the translation of jokes across languages, the translation of jokes across cultures, and the translation of jokes across time. Add to that what is Freud's (likely) pedestrian sense of humor and you have yourself a rather tedious read hidden behind the promise of an interesting, if not enlightening, philosophical investigation; it is at best a biographical and historical window into the author himself. As I began to suggest, it is because few if any of the book's jokes are actually funny that book's treatise is, from the beginning, severed from the only interesting question: 'Why do we laugh?' or 'Just what sort of phenomena is laughter?' At one point-and one that I suspect Freud is not being so humble as he might sound-the author admits: "we do not in the strict sense know what we are laughing at." But he continually does a rather unsatisfactory job of expounding this. The reader might learn some psychological motivations that certain kinds of jokes perhaps condemn their tellers to, but will likely be disappointed if looking for a deeper understanding of how and why the human animal becomes victim to what Wikipedia describes as the involuntary, physical reaction, consisting typically of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. Freud intermittently suggests a sort of energetic economy as the basis of 'funniness' but as soon as this seems an interesting inroad, his own tendency to speak presumptively and authoritatively where he has earned little right to do so, gets in the way. He often speaks to the reader as if she is already on board, "we can only surmise that…", "we have now learned…" etc. And when he says things like: "I have not come up against anything that would have required me to alter or improve my line of thought, so I can wait quietly until my readers' understanding has caught up with me, or at least until intelligent criticism has proved to me the fundamental errors of my view." it seems that he cares less about being right than he does about being ahead. Regrettable, and unless you're a Freud scholar/enthusiast, forgettable.