Levine, Madeline

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Levine, Madeline

PERSONAL:

Married; children: three sons.

ADDRESSES:

Home—CA.

CAREER:

Writer. Clinical psychologist in Marin County, CA, for more than twenty-five years; consultant to preschools and elementary schools, San Francisco Bay area.

WRITINGS:

Viewing Violence: How Media Violence Affects Your Child's and Adolescent's Development, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

See No Evil: A Guide to Protecting Our Children from Media Violence, Jossey-Bass Publishers (San Francisco, CA), 1998.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Madeline Levine is a clinical psychologist and an expert on media violence and its effects on children and young adults. In Viewing Violence: How Media Violence Affects Your Child's and Adolescent's Development, Levine addresses the subject of gratuitous violence on television and in film, and how young people react to such material. Among other responses, she cites a tendency toward more violent behavior and a lessening in creativity, both long-term developmental effects. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked that the author "has performed a valuable service for parents here by lucidly synthesizing four decades of research on the harmful effects of media violence."

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids addresses a less commonly discussed issue—the effects of overindulgence on children. Levine focuses on a series of studies that suggest that children who are raised with their every wish fulfilled are more likely to be depressed and to turn to drugs and/or alcohol. She addresses the increased level of pressure on modern teenagers, and their difficulty in setting more realistic goals for themselves. Kay Hogan Smith, in a review for the Library Journal, found that Levine wrote "with clarity and understanding of the culture of affluence and its pitfalls."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1996, Mary Carroll, review of Viewing Violence: How Media Violence Affects Your Child's and Adolescent's Development, p. 309; April 15, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids, p. 15.

Books, September 24, 2006, Erika Schickel, review of The Price of Privilege, p. 10.

Choice, February 1, 1997, review of Viewing Violence, p. 1042.

Instructor, October 1, 2006, Caralee Adams, "The Hidden Price of Privilege: Upper-Middle-Class Kids Are Increasingly Facing Some Serious Problems. Expert Madeline Levine Tells Why," p. 31.

Library Journal, October 1, 1996, Antoinette Bruckman, review of Viewing Violence, p. 110; April 15, 2006, Kay Hogan Smith, review of The Price of Privilege, p. 101.

Psychology Today, July 1, 2006, review of The Price of Privilege, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, August 12, 1996, review of Viewing Violence, p. 73; April 3, 2006, review of The Price of Privilege, p. 49.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 2006, review of The Price of Privilege.

Television Quarterly, fall, 1996, Fritz Jacobi, review of Viewing Violence; January 1, 1997, review of Viewing Violence, p. 96.