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Rating: 
Summary: Some good concepts though mostly of one man's words
Review: As a layman reading this, I thought there were several concepts of interest;Adult Children - some of us are stuck in our adolescent ways, never growing up, even as adults. Collapse of Patriarchy - in today's world of social upheaval, where anything goes (and it ususally does), we and our children live in a world where traditional concepts are challenged. This applies to gender, age, etc etc. (Pittman compares this to the decline of Windsor) Our world is increasingly becoming narcisstic, we're trained to consume more and more. In this post patriarchy world, we are even more challenged to grow ourselves and that of our children. Pittman's message is simply Grow Up! Take responsiblity for yourself, your choices, your relationships, and forgive your parents. Still a good read that most people should enjoy, even if they don't agree with everything he says.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful, but Underdeveloped and Flawed
Review: I bought this book because I am constantly telling my husband to grow up, and his immaturity infuriates me primarily because I know that I myself am also immature. The most basic problem I found with this book has already been mentioned: it provides no helpful advice on how to grow up. My other problem is that he accuses we immature folks of whining and blaming when our lives do not turn out as expected. The fact is, however, that as children we are advised to do certain things to secure our future, for example, to get an education. When we do not obtain the financial results that our advisors (parents, teachers, ministers, etc.) promised implicitly if not explicitly, yet we must make student loan payments for the rest of our natural lives, we feel cheated. This is natural and fair. Now I come to my second point concerning the flawed character of the book. If mature adulthood consists in contribution to human society, is anger about injustice not a catalyst for maturity rather than a mere manifestation of immaturity?
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, but Underdeveloped and Flawed
Review: I bought this book because I am constantly telling my husband to grow up, and his immaturity infuriates me primarily because I know that I myself am also immature. The most basic problem I found with this book has already been mentioned: it provides no helpful advice on how to grow up. My other problem is that he accuses we immature folks of whining and blaming when our lives do not turn out as expected. The fact is, however, that as children we are advised to do certain things to secure our future, for example, to get an education. When we do not obtain the financial results that our advisors (parents, teachers, ministers, etc.) promised implicitly if not explicitly, yet we must make student loan payments for the rest of our natural lives, we feel cheated. This is natural and fair. Now I come to my second point concerning the flawed character of the book. If mature adulthood consists in contribution to human society, is anger about injustice not a catalyst for maturity rather than a mere manifestation of immaturity?
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend whose opinions and attitudes I have long respected. She had cited for me a few paragraphs and I thought it would be something I would enjoy, if not agree with totally--at least it would be stimulating food for thought. I was very surprised to open to book and find Dr. Pittman's advice to be really lacking basis. There were many times when I couldn't actually decipher what his point was exactly, or what he suggest we do to go about remedying our lives and our world. I agree that we are living in a world that is rapidly being taken over by consumerism, thoughtlessness, and pretense. I agree that many of the attitudes being celebrated are, at their cores, immature. I also agree that all of this is learned, and is thus a choice that we can make, or not make. We are in charge of our lives, and it is our job to own up to that responsibility--if we don't, we live in a world where other people and powers-that-be control us, and that doesn't feel good no matter how we might try to convince ourselves otherwise. But I don't think this is worth writing a nearly 300-page book about, or worth the reader's money to buy it. It seems to me that these conclusions are rather obvious, if you just keep your eyes and ears open--and I would hope that anyone who is interested in this book has already taken that step, and realizes that something's amiss. I have yet to see what exactly is entailed by "growing up," in Dr. Pittman's opinion. How exactly does one do that? Chances are, the people who are most in need of this statement have not learned this skill, or else they wouldn't need the book. Grow up....how?....by growing up! All in all, I was disappointed. The content is not what I thought it would be, and in the midst of that I'm afraid his "witty" writing style was lost on me. I wish I would have perused this in a bookstore before spending the money.
Rating:
Summary: Just another jeremiad from a 1950's White Male All-American
Review: If my enemy's enemy is my friend, I should have loved this book. Like Pittman, I abhor the effect of pop psychology and much psychotherapy, valorizing as it does self-absorption, hedonism, and immaturity. But this book offended me deeply. Consider this example: Of Black people who believe that their current difficulties have something to do with being the descendants of slaves in a racist country, Pittman says that attitude is "not helpful" because "that was then; this is now." (p. 33) Unfortunately for Pittman's pompous pronouncing, a fair body of very, very solid research--represented by, say, Dalton Conley's "Being Black, Living in the Red"--shows that he is just flat wrong. And if Pittman had spent some of his career teaching at a historically Black college that serves mostly poor students, rather than treating individuals affluent enough to pay private practice fees, or reviewing the effectiveness of social welfare and remedial education programs instead of reviewing movies, he would have a greater appreciation of how ludicrous attitudes like his are. The same attitude shows itself in his condescension toward a woman whose economic woes probably do, in fact--despite Pittman's preachments--reflect the fact that when she was of an age to undertake professional education, sexism kept her out of medical school. It would be nice if Pittman helped us understand how to deal with the real and dire effects of legacies of oppression, instead of blaming victims for the inevitable disadvantages they suffer. Of course, if he did that, and really had some experience and knowledge of what it's like to try to help overcome such baleful and ugly effects, he might not be so happy as he so proudly and frequently tells us he is. He might sometimes suffer despair that, in fact, horrible things are simply beyond the power of anyone to change quickly enough. (I'm a white guy, by the way--who has enjoyed all the cultural advantages thereof. I just have some sensitivity to, and experience with, and knowledge of the research on, what oppression does to communities and their members.) Here's another Pittman pronouncement; "The rules of appropriate ways to act and treat other people aren't very different from culture to culture, century to century, or even millenium to millenium" Wow. What have all those cultural anthropologists and cultural historians been wasting their time on? Why have policy makers been in such a tizzy about what to do over female gential mutilation among certain minorities in ths country? Why have so many philosophers wasted so much time trying to figure out we can even justify any notion of objective, imperative morals in the face of the extreme differences between moral codes in diverse times and places? Why do we in America consider infanticide evil, if rules haven't changed much? Why, in some cultures (even some subcultures within America) is incest considered no big deal, and certainly no one's business but the family, while elsewhere we see it as an absolutely horrid issue that calls for social intervention. Why do we no longer hold slaves? Why is it no longer honorable for men to take teen-aged boys as lovers? If Pittman were right, I guess I could go get a harem and some slaves, and some teen-age boy friends, and I could kill off any inconvenient children--since rules of how to treat each other allegedly haven't changed much. Well, these examples reflect the level of scholarship and careful thought contained in Pittman's book. This book is just dogmatic. It suggests that Pittman lacks respect for serious scholars and analysts--who are quite grown up--whose views do not agree with his. I'm not quite sure why Pittman thinks people who live other ways than he suggests aren't grown ups, or why he thinks he has, from his therapy room and pop psych advice columnist chair, divined the essence of maturity. His views just won't hold water, when compared to responsible research. I don't know how Pittman votes, but this is pretty thoroughly a 1950s-style Republican panegyric, a paean to "culture is nothing, context is nothing, history is irrelevant, anyone can be happy if he or she just quits whining and gets busy" ideology. It is neither well researched nor responsive to mainstream scholarship and research. America's current love affair with self-absorption, served by its hirelings in the psychotherapy and self-help industries, should certainly be opposed vehemently. But it should be opposed with careful research, sound analysis, and responsible thought--that is, responsive to the respectable views of others, especially more well-informed, others. With its lack of such attributes, this book strikes me as simply an author's self-indulgence. If you are looking for a thoughtful analysis of the ill effects of pop psychology and kindred businsses, if you are looking for a well-informed analysis of how America got so screwy about rights versus responsibilities, if you want to know why it is wrong to put your personal happiness first and foremost in your concerns, if you want a better understanding of how to live as a responsible person in community with others--well, don't buy this book. That's what I was looking for, and this just absolutely is not it.
Rating:
Summary: Some good concepts though mostly of one man's words
Review: It's a good book, but since the other reviews cover its strong points, let me include the weak ones: Dr. Pittman has a couple of biases that, in my opinion, weaken the book a bit. First, he advances a stay-married-at-all-costs philosophy that doesn't square with reality. On one hand I say, "Thank God someone finally has the courage to confront our national trend to use divorce to demonstrate how much we've 'grown.'" And I applaud his willingness to speak the truth--that divorce is far more devastating to children than the divorce peddlers dare acknowledge. We scratch our divorced heads (while our children fall to violence and suicide), asking, "Gee, what's wrong with kids today?" Hello, they have no fathers! Dr. Pittman fails to answer satisfactorily why childless couples should "stay married at all costs" or, for that matter, why people who don't plan to have children should get married in the first place. He provides ample reasons not to divorce, but doesn't really address the benefits and potential of marriage. Nor does he speak to the possibility that marriage may simply be growing obsolete. Like it or not, people aren't willing or able to tough it out anymore. Is the answer to "grow up" and act like we used ta'? I don't know. I don't think Dr. Pittman does either. He does, at least, remind us that kids are involved, and kids need two parents with the maturity to put the kids first. That is--or should be--the commitment that goes with the decision to have children. Thank you, Dr. Pittman, for helping me sort out my growing uneasiness about those hypnotic messages from the PBS children's shows: "You're SPECIAL." "You're great just the way you are." "There's nobody like you." Sounds good, but I've begun to wonder if self-esteem hasn't become a little too divorced from useful activity in the service of something larger than one's self. Dr. Pittman assures us it has, and reminds us that raising our kids into mature adults has everything to do with teaching them not just to be "unique," but to be sensitive and responsible. Our obsession with 'self-esteem' doesn't seem to be turning out healthy adults, does it? Sadly, for all he does know, Dr. Pittman misses a critical point in the raising of children. On one side, he advises us to stop seeking the easy solution of divorce (for the sake of the children). On the other, he urges both parents out the door to partake in exciting careers, leaving the kids, presumably, to languish in day care. C'mon, Doc, doesn't "growing up" sometimes include forgoing the comfort--even the seeming necessity--of two-incomes in order to raise our own children? If kids aren't merely a "yuppie fashion accessory," couldn't we reduce the size of the house and the number of cars so that mom or dad is with the kids before and after school? It ain't easy (I know!), but grow up. Our kids need us more than they need more stuff--more, even, than they need enough stuff. Dr. Pittman's second bias: He seems a bit obsessed with the role of sexual stereotyping in the failure of today's marriages. I wonder if this is really as true today as it was for his generation. I just don't see the sort of role inflexibility in the twenty- and thirty-somethings I know as he does. Shortcomings aside, it's a solid book with a message our society very much needs. Get it for that narcissistic relative of yours. You know the one. Maybe he or she will read it after the next divorce. Bob Gordon
Rating: 
Summary: Why I rated this "three stars" despite my agreement
Review: There's a good reason why I rated this book down despite my own feeling that Frank Pittman is right. Dr. Pittman fails to take into account the religious philosophies of his readership. I agree that the trend toward higher and higher numbers of divorces is wrong. I agree that we shouldn't be paying so much attention to cultural gurus such as Martha Stewart (in his chapter on women, he states outright: "Martha Stewart? Who's Martha Stewart?"). I agree with most of what Dr. Pittman (a practicing psychiatrist) says. BUT - what is the role of God in Dr. Pittman's philosophy? One of the few things that has helped me cope with the family I was raised in is Jesus' words about "I come not to bring peace, but a sword." In other words, how does one cope if one's moral system comes into direct conflict with the system advocated by a dysfunctional family? What if you're being forced into a life of crime or domestic violence and you know that's just plain wrong? Are we forced to interact with a family like that despite the inherent danger? Dr. Pittman would seem to think that we are, and I wish he wouldn't have been so adamant on that. That philosophy - one of following Jesus rather than my family - has been the only thing enabling me to let go and not get all tied up in family disputes. But Dr. Pittman would apparently have me go back into a system like that if only to forgive or let go of the tar baby, not realizing that the tar baby is sticky and will entrap us. And that is why Dr. Pittman gets only three stars from me.
Rating: 
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: This book is for all of us struggling to be adults and "do the right thing" in a society which fosters/ rewards irresponsibility and sees adolescence as a way of life rather than a stage we go through on our way to becoming full and compassionate human beings. Dr. Pittman eloquently but humorously addresses how to grow up, take responsibilty for ourselves and get the most out of our lives while debunking the myths which keep many of us entrenched in out-dated roles/expectations and unhappiness. It is a quick read and at times I laughed outloud at the authors candor and references to movies which substantiated his points.
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