Land of the Lost Parents

During the 1960s, it was sometimes suggested that social rebellion among the younger generation could be blamed on Dr. Spock, the pediatrician and psychologist whose best-selling books on raising children had been a bible to tens of millions of postwar parents. But today it would be impossible to point the finger at any one expert. Bookstore and library shelves are jammed with countless guidebooks dispensing knowledge that for most of human history was passed down from generation to generation, not written down in books.

The first child-rearing guides appeared about a century ago, and now there are so many that a new publishing trend has popped up: books investigating why there are so many parenting books. Some attribute it to 'push-parenting' and 'paranoid parenting' -- terms used to describe a parental style based on controlling all aspects of a child's life. In Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children (Knopf), author Ann Hulbert looks at the modern history of child-rearing advice. Peter N. Stearns covers similar territory in Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York University Press). And these are but two of many recent studies that explore why bringing up baby has become a cradle of so much cultural anxiety.

Reviewing these works in the neoconservative journal Commentary (June 2003), Kay S. Hymowitz notes that 'parental angst' is not new, but it does seem more pervasive these days. A century ago, when one of every six children died before the age of 5, parents focused on the more immediate task of keeping children alive. But as medical progress and better infant nutrition lowered childhood mortality rates, parental anxiety began to shift to the 'right' ways of raising children. A new cult of experts soon arose promising to extend scientific efficiency to all aspects of child development. But these new scientific authorities were often no more accurate than the earlier 'folk' beliefs they replaced. In the early decades of the 20th century, for instance, it was widely accepted that touching children too often stunted their development.