The Collapse of Parenting

Fascinating book on how to raise your children in this day and age. Where do parents go wrong? There was more than one anecdote with which I identified.

A very frustrating read. While some of the ideas of the book are good advice, most of it feels more like an opinion piece about returning to “the good old days”.

The whole thing feels like a long, rambling rant. Sometimes it's hard to see the point he's trying to make in one section, and you wonder how much longer he's going to go on before he gets to the point. And sometimes he doesn't bother making a point at all.

The author also seems to go out of his way to avoid more common terms that a reader could look up afterwards. For example, he does mention “authoritative” parenting in passing, but then goes on to change terminology to say “too hard”, “too soft” and “just right”. There are technical terms which make a lot more sense than this very vague idea: “Authoritative”, “Permissive” and “Authoriatarian”. There are a few other examples, but that is the most glaring.

Overall, I would not recommend this. Just go read a basic article on authoritative parenting and you'll get the gist.