Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture-and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies. In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics.

But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined.

New parents are faced with innumerable decisions to make regarding the best way to care for their baby, and, naturally, they often turn for guidance to friends and family members who have already raised children. Her latest book, 'The Culture of Our Discontent: Beyond the Medical Model of Mental Illness,' is due out next fall.A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do-and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting. She is interested in the intersection of biology and culture and the evolution of human behavior and parenting styles. Small has focused her anthropological research in the study of parents, children and childrearing in other cultures as well as female social behavior and rank, sexuality, mate choice and reproduction. She also is the author of four books, including 'Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children,' 'Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent,' 'What's Love Got to Do With It? The Evolution of Human Mating' and 'Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates.' In addition, she is a commentator for National Public Radio. She was recognized by the president of AAA as 'one of anthropology's treasures' and for her many publications for the general public, including more than three dozen articles in such magazines as Discover, Natural History, Scientific American and New Scientist, on a wide range of topics, from chimpanzee hunting to family structure among the Bari of Venezuela. Small, who trained as a primatologist, received her award at the annual meeting of the AAA in November in Washington, D.C.

Small, professor of anthropology at Cornell University, is the recipient of the 2005 Anthropology in Media Award from the American Anthropology Association (AAA) for 'the successful communication of anthropology to the general public through the media' and for her 'broad and sustained public impact at local, national and international levels.'

Our Babies, Ourselves by Meredith Small