About this item
As every parent knows, kids are surprisingly clever negotiators. But how can we avoid those all-too-familiar wails, "That's not fair!" and "You can't make me!"? In The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting, the award-winning journalist and father of five Paul Raeburn and the game theorist Kevin Zollman pair up to highlight tactics from the worlds of economics and business that can help parents break the endless cycle of quarrels and ineffective solutions. Raeburn and Zollman show that some of the same strategies successfully applied to big business deals and politics -- such as the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Ultimatum Game -- can be used to solve such titanic, age-old parenting problems as dividing up toys, keeping the peace on long car rides, and sticking to homework routines.Raeburn and Zollman open each chapter with a common parenting dilemma. Then they show how carefully concocted schemes involving bargains and fair incentives can save the day. Through smart case studies of game theory in action, Raeburn and Zollman reveal how parents and children devise strategies, where those strategies go wrong, and what we can do to help raise happy and savvy kids while keeping the rest of the family happy too.Delightfully witty, refreshingly irreverent, and just a bit Machiavellian, The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting looks past the fads to offer advice you can put into action today.
About the Author
Paul Raeburn (www.paulraeburn.com) is a blogger, media critic, writer, and the author of "Do Fathers Matter? What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked," published in June, 2014. It's the first book to examine new research that shows the substantial contributions fathers make to their children. It will completely change our view of fatherhood, and offer many insights that can help men become better fathers.
Raeburn is also the author, most recently, of Acquainted with the Night: A Parent's Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children, published by Broadway Books. He contributes to Discover, Scientific American, The New York Times Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Psychology Today, among many others.
His blogs include the Knight Science Journalism Tracker (ksjtracker.mit.edu) , where he is chief media critic, and About Fathers for Psychology Today (psychologytoday.com/blog/about-fathers) , which will be relatively quiet until he meets his book deadline.
Raeburn is a former senior editor and senior writer at Business Week, and former science editor and chief science correspondent at The Associated Press.
