When in HK we talk about the issues around the post-80s in the society, we often easily forget there are clear-and-present issues about nurturing our toddlers among the post-70s.
Nurturing is a big word so we would expect the new theories and findings, no matter how scientific they claim they are, are difficult for the young learning parents to swallow. I even heard, more than a few times recently, that the young learning parents themselves are too busy at work or catching up with other essential life tasks they doubt whether it is really necessary to listen to and to follow the experts' advice.
The experts always say they come up with something new from the science but as I have been told, the busy tertiary-educated learning parents don't buy that and sometimes even deliberately overlook them. I'm not a professor or scientist of pedagogy so I may not give a good enough answer for all; all I can share is that I have seen a great deal of contemporary parents sinking in their own piles of massive egos, out of all proportion to the all-star GPAs they have earned from their college studies, and overlooking what could be very important and very visionary in the newest scientific pieces of evidence scientists took some pains to try to sort out and present to the public.
Can You Never Tell a Child She's Smart?
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/12/17/can-you-never-tell-a-child-she-s-smart.aspx
Some Kids Are Never Spanked - Do They Turn Out Better?
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/12/30/never-been-spanked.aspx
A Band-Aid Pulling & Fixing a Zigzag on an Egg (As a Result of Serendipity, I confess)
http://www.litlovers.com/guide_nurture_shock.html#author
* There are a dozen new copies in the library and they are all either checked out or being reserved. I reserved one, bringing it to the nearest library near home.