Hara Marano is a Journalist who knows a great deal about human behavior, and although she is not a psychologist, she has written for the New York Times, and in the column for Psychology Today. Marano is also the Editor of Psychology Today, which she has been writing in for over 10 years. She has had major achievements, and has written and published many books such as “A Nation of Wimps” where she discusses the problems with the way children are being raised, leading them to be “wimps” because they are overprotected by their parents, and prevented from forming social and independence skills.
Hara Marano was born on July 12, 1940, the first twin in a pair, in Mt. Vernon, New York. She grew up in a family of two parents and three children—an older brother and her twin sister in Mt. Vernon. She attended A.B. Davis High School, in a class of over 700 students. She was always interested in deep explanations of things, and for the term paper required for high school graduation, she chose the subject Does Civilization Need Religion? Over the course of a year, she did massive amounts of reading for her paper, including much psychology. Majoring in English literature at college, she took only one formal psychology course. After graduation from college, she set out to became a journalist writing about medical subjects, a longstanding goal. Her first job was as a copy editor on a highly regarded weekly magazine, Medical World News, where she learned a great deal about writing by copy-editing the articles of many excellent writers. She first married at age 27 and then had two sons, one when she was 29, one at 32. She worked throughout both pregnancies but took a year off after each birth before returning to work.
After a short time, she was promoted to articles editor, and she both wrote and edited articles. Gradually she realized the importance of personality, cognitive, and family factors on individual health, and was increasingly drawn to writing about such topics. The late 1970s and 1980s were a particularly lively time for the development and application of family systems thinking, and she wrote about developments in the field in the U.S. and abroad. She joined the staff of Psychology Today in 1991, at 50, when the magazine was being revived after a two-year hiatus and she was asked to reinvent the publication. She wrote her first book in 1990, an examination of style, which she regards as basically psychological— the expression of personality through clothes. She wrote her second book, "Why Doesn't Anybody Like Me"?: A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids," in 1998; the book expanded a wildly successful cover story she wrote for Psychology Today on bullies and bullying. Her third book, "A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting," was published in 2008, and expanded on a similarly successful article she wrote examining the contemporary culture of over protective parenting, and how that can affect the way a child's personality, causing them to be a "wimp" because they expect their parents to do all of their hard work in life for them. She is still writing and editing articles for Psychology Today, and educating more and more readers about the fascinating world of the human mind with her intriguing writing.
Reference List
editMarano, H. E. (2004). A nation of wimps. Psychology Today, 37(6), 58-70.
Marano, H. E. (2008). Pitfalls of perfectionism. Psychology Today, 41(2), 80-87.
Marano, H. E. (2012). The dangers of loneliness. Psychology Today.