Does it make you a better parent if you have pioneered scientific theories of child development? In a unique study, David Cohen compares what great psychologists have said about raising children and the way they did it themselves. Did the experts practice what they preached? 　

Using an eclectic variety of sources, from letters, diaries, autobiographies, biographies, as well as material from interviews, each chapter focuses on a key figure in historical context. There are many surprises. Was Piaget, the greatest child psychologist of the 20th century, the only man to try to...