Should babies sleep alone in cribs, or in bed with parents? Is talking to babies useful, or a waste of time? "A World of Babies" provides different answers to these and countless other child-rearing questions, precisely because diverse communities around the world hold drastically different beliefs about parenting. While celebrating that diversity, the book also explores the challenges that poverty, globalization and violence pose for parents. Fully updated for the twenty-first century, this edition features a new introduction and eight new or revised case studies that directly address contemporary parenting challenges, from China and Peru to Israel and the West Bank. Written as imagined advice manuals to parents, the creative format of this book brings alive a rich body of knowledge that highlights many models of baby-rearing--each shaped by deeply held values and widely varying cultural contexts. Parenthood may never again seem a matter of "common sense." This book: (1) Addresses the implications of the most urgent challenges of the twenty-first century--racism, religious intolerance, immigration, poverty, educational inequities and environmental degradation--for the lives of parents and children and their wider communities, offering a realistic sense of the challenges facing real families living in the real world; (2) Features a wide variety and diverse set of parenting practices that represent communities across religions (Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism and animism) and world areas (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa); and (3) Case studies range from communities facing desperate poverty to those that enjoy relative prosperity; in all cases, the chapters analyze the economic circumstances of the families, communities and nations for their implications on childrearing agendas, opportunities and constraints. The following are contributors to this book: Michelle Johnson, Erin Raffety, Bree Akesson, Deborah Golden, Sirad Shirdon, Kate Grim-Feinberg, and Mariah Schug. [For the first edition, see ED451944.]