Review
Parents of babies, toddlers, school age children and
teenagers will find much in this book to provoke, irritate, and clarify the
tough and often perplexing work of raising and educating 21st century kids.
Marano, even when she fails to persuade, makes us think hard about what parents
should expect from their children and what kids need to become strong, happy,
and healthy young adults.
If I weren't the seasoned parent of two teenagers, I wonder how I'd feel about
having children after reading this daunting but interesting and ultimately
hopeful book. Marano, aiming to create as much drama as she can muster, begins
by sounding the alarm on a "national crisis" of heavy-handed, selfish parenting
and the generation of cowardly, inauthentic, depressed, numb and/or
self-destructive young adults it's produced. In a series of sometimes strident
arguments...
Beyond the Book
Competitive college admissions are one of the reasons regularly cited in
Wimps for parental over involvement
and the increasingly heavy academic pressures placed on children and teens.
With this in mind, the March 31, 2008
article in The New York Times undoubtedly sent a cold shiver down many a parent's back but, arguably, unnecessarily so ....
This year, many top colleges are reporting record lows in acceptance rates. For example, Harvard accepted only 7% of the more than 27,000 applicants (about 2,000 students), in the process
rejecting many of the 3,300 applicants who ranked first in their high school class and many with perfect scores on one or more SAT papers (2,500 scored a perfect 800 in the SAT critical reading test and 3,300 had a perfect...
