Renowned Psychologist & Parenting Expert on Child & Adolescent Issues
Madeline Levine, Ph.D. is a psychologist with close to 30 years of experience as a clinician, consultant, educator, and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well. She is highly sought after as a lecturer and keynote speaker for parents, educators, and business leaders both nationally and internationally, and she is often a consultant to major corporations and high net worth individuals. She is frequently the go-to person on issues of parenting for both print media and radio. She has been featured on television programs such as Katie, The Today Show, and The Lehrer Report and on multiple radio stations including NPR programs such as the Diane Rehm Show and Forum.
The Price of Privilege, explores the reasons why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems. Teach Your Children Well tackles our current narrow definition of success – how it unnecessarily stresses academically talented kids and marginalizes many more whose talents and interests are less amenable to measurement. The development of skills needed to be successful in the 21st century – creativity, collaboration, innovation – are not easily developed in our competitive, fast-paced, high pressure world. Teach Your Children Well gives practical, research-based solutions to help parents return their families to healthier and saner versions of themselves by remembering that successful parenting is measured 20 or 30 years down the road, not at the end of any particular grading period. Both books have been translated into Chinese, Russian, Japanese and multiple other languages. Her August 2012 New York Times opinion piece has been e-mailed over a million times – one of the most e-mailed op-ed pieces in the history of the New York Times.
Levine is also a co-founder of Challenge Success, a project of the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Challenge Success believes that our increasingly competitive world has led to tremendous anxiety about our children’s futures and has resulted in a high pressure, myopic focus on grades, test scores and performance. This kind of pressure and narrow focus isn’t helping our kids become the resilient, capable, meaningful contributors we need in the 21st century. Challenge Success provides families and schools with the practical research-based tools they need to raise healthy, motivated kids, capable of reaching their full potential.
Madeline Levine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Education. She began her career as an elementary and junior high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York before moving to California and earning her M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. She has had a large clinical practice with an emphasis on child and adolescent problems and parenting issues, and has taught Child Development classes to graduate students at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. For many years, Levine has been a consultant to various schools, from preschool through high school, public as well as private, throughout the country.
Madeline Levine and her husband of 35 years, Lee Schwartz, M.D. are the incredibly proud (and slightly relieved) parents of three newly minted and thriving adult sons.
Praise for Madeline Levine’s Presentations
“Working with Madeline was fantastic. She was an outstanding speaker and the event was a huge success… Madeline was a fantastic speaker – she was able to connect with the audience on both an entertaining and personal level. Her message was well received and there is still a buzz in the community.”
—Ian Kennedy, Collingwood School
“Working with Madeline was amazing! She is so down to earth, practical, and enlightening! I could listen to her every day… and learn something new each time! I have had many parent messages affirming their experience of the presentation. I wouldn’t improve anything!”
—Selina McGuire, Loyola Academy
“Our staff raved about her presentation. Many informed me it was the best opening day in the last 21 years.”
—Janet Stutz, Consolidated School District 181
“Dr. Levine’s presentation at Trinity School was stellar. Her views on child development resonated with parents and educators alike, and gave the audience substantive advice on raising happy and healthy children in the 21st Century.”
—Liz Ball, Trinity School
Praise for Teach Your Children Well
“Levine really comes into her own . . . when she moves beyond child development to concentrate instead on parent development, exploring why we do the misguided things we do, and asking how we must (as we must) change ourselves and behave differently.”
—Judith Warner, New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“A fantastic, on-point, desperately needed book! If you have children or care about children or care about the future of this country and the world, read this book.”
—Dr. Ned Hallowell, author of The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness
“A modern guide for the perplexed! First Levine captures a culture which puts competition and social status ahead of character. Then, with a gentle, firm remarkably clear head, she tells parents precisely what to do to bring good sense and respect for children back to parenting.”
—Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., author of The Blessing of a B Minus
and The Blessing of a Skinned Knee
“Madeline Levine’s voice is a welcome antidote to the Tiger-Momming of America. But Teach Your Children Well is much more than a diagnosis of how we’ve gone astray. It is packed with smart and savvy advice for raising independent, productive, and well-adjusted young people. Read this book – your kids will thank you.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind
“With keen insight and telling examples, Levine offers suggestions for adopting a more balanced idea of success that requires changing deeply ingrained habits but is well worth the effort.”
—David Elkind, PhD, author of The Hurried Child
“For the sake of the adults of tomorrow, I hope that Teach Your Children Well becomes a must-read and must-discuss book for parents today.”
—Kenneth R. Ginsburg MD, MS Ed, author of Letting Go with Love and Confidence and Building Resilience in Children and Teens
“An excellent new book.”
—Forbes“Here’s one potentially bright and shiny opportunity for optimism (at least if you take her advice) thanks to one busy and one hope’s wise clinical psychologist. . . Her insights are fresh . . . look no further for your beach book, here it is!”
—Psychology Today
Praise for The Price of Privilege
“Levine’s fresh and important ideas about parenting in the age of affluence will help parents teach their children what they most need to learn-how to manage their emotions and impulses, form healthy relationships, think for themselves and become useful, well-adjusted and moral people.”
—Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia
“This remarkably thoughtful and readable book describes the possible deleterious impacts of material advantage on both children and families . . . offers many rich examples, beautifully illustrating how the complex tasks of parenting and child development may become compromised by parental intrusion, overprotection, and subtle dilutions of family life.”
—Stuart Hauser, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
“With up-to-date scientific research, compelling clinical cases, and a refined sense of empathy, Levine teaches us about the difficult challenges faced by affluent families and provides useful strategies for helping them towards more fulfilling lives.”
—Tim Kasser, Ph.D., author of The High Price of Materialism
“The Price of Privilege is an engaging and thoughtful look at the challenges faced by contemporary affluent families. It focuses on the serious problems children are running into, and the ways in which we as parents impact both the behavior of our children and the likelihood of their completing a successful adolescence.”
—Lynn E. Ponton, M.D., author of The Romance of Risk:
Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do
“A timely and important book . . . With wisdom and insight, she proposes a path that will lead to greater authenticity and connection for everyone.”
—Jean Kilbourne, author of Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel
“Levine’s writing is . . . reflective and interesting. A constructive therapist, she offers practical guidelines and parenting strategies for those struggling with troubled teens. The advice is useful to any parent of any income level and includes ways to foster healthy autonomy, impulse control and sense of self.”
—Scientific American
“Seminal. . . . All parents should consider this book a must-read, whether they’re having problems with their children or not.”
—Washington Post
“She treats her subjects as well as her subject with compassion and understanding.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An insightful and helpful book. . . . It should be on every parent’s summer reading list.”
—San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
