Please Yell at My Kids: What Cultures Around the World Can Teach You about Parenting in Community, Raising Independent Kids, and Not Losing Your Mind

From an acclaimed journalist, this "eye opening and insightful" book shows how global cultures parent in community, sharing practical guidance for American parents on how to reimagine the way they raise their children (Iben Dissing Sandahl, author The Danish Way Of Parenting).

Raising kids in America is difficult--no federally supported parental leave, a lack of mental health support, a crushing combination of workplace pressure and aspirational parental perfection, and the fresh hell that is the playgroup Facebook page. But what if there was another way? Parenting--and specifically motherhood--looks wildly different across nations. Please Yell at My Kids is an around the world journey and a practical guide to rethinking parenting. What can we learn from Brazilian birth parties, Singaporean grandparents, and Danish babies sleeping soundly outside of coffee shops? And how can that be integrated into the lives of American readers? Journalist Marina Lopes travels around the globe, interviewing parents and caregivers to provide practical, actionable ways to change the way we view parenting in the United States.

At the heart of many global approaches to parenting lies one simple, and not so simple thing: community. In America, parenting is, at best, a dual mission. But globally, parenthood is more often a team sport. From guiding caregivers through how to define their own non-negotiable values, to navigating tricky conversations with their in-laws, Please Yell at My Kids provides readers with the tools to build a community of care in their own lives and find a newfound joy in parenting.

Author: Marina Lopes
Publisher: Balance
Published: 04/22/2025
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780306834417


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/10/2025

About the Author
Marina Lopes is a Brazilian- American journalist who has written about feminism, caregiving, and motherhood across five continents. From 2016 through 2020, Marina covered Brazil for the Washington Post.
Her reporting took her from the remote corners of Brazil's Amazon rainforest, where she interviewed female shamans challenging gender norms in their tribes, to Rio's gang-controlled favelas, where she spoke to mothers who lost their children to gun violence. In Brazil's Zika-infected northeast, she chronicled the devastation of the epidemic on families living in poverty. Her article on the spread of the Venezuelan diaspora in South America was nominated by the Washington Post for a Pulitzer Prize. She was also a 2019 recipient of an International Women's Media Foundation Grant for her coverage of sex trafficking rings in the Amazon. Her 2018 series on how gay Brazilians confronted the rise of homophobia in Bolsonaro's Brazil was nominated for a GLAAD award for outstanding newspaper article.
Before joining the Post, she was a correspondent for Reuters in Mozambique. Her work has been published by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the BBC, PBS, Vice, and others. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.