Small Bargains: Children in Crisis and the Meaning of Parental Love

Drawing from his 15 years of experience as a child psychologist, Garrison has gathered portraits of filial relationships that test both the unconditional nature and the endurance of parental love. Among his patients are the adoptive parents who dump their difficult eight-year-old boy in a hospital; the miserably unhappy mother of an emotionally indifferent son with an esoteric mental disorder; the macho father of a boy who acts more like a girl; and the short father of a very short son. In describing these tales of parental expectations and disappointments, the book shows that parental love is given for selfish, as well as selfless, reasons. The words of the parents and the children, so authentically reported, are vaguely disquieting because of the tangle of pain and shame they reveal. Garrison does not preen over how he fixed these families up, but rather leaves readers to wonder whether they ever did find a way out. (July)