Anxious Parents

A strong, effective, and readable portrayal of how twentieth-century American parents have invested and over-invested in their children. In a fairly short compass, Stearns has demonstrated many of the things that historians have tended to belabor-the role of expertise, why despite their declining numbers, children have become so important socially, the new realm of consumption, how the anxiety about children has become a central matter in twentieth-century culture and even an identifier of American life. Stearns knows what is going on and that children are not a means to express other anxieties, but the very source of many of the anxieties we express. -- Paula S. Fass,University of California, Berkeley
Anxiety is the hallmark of contemporary parenting. Todays parents are tormented by fears of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, child abductions, and juvenile drug and alcohol use. In perhaps his most timely and exciting book, Peter N. Stearns explains with wit and humane insight how modern mothers and fathers came to agonize incessantly about children's personality development, school performance, and psychological well-being. -- Steven Mintz,University of Houston
In what is his trademark style, Stearns creates an artful synthesis that is both revelatory and captivating. An at times unsettling analysis of parental angst, the book is replete with worthy insights for historians and contemporary parents alike. * The Journal of American History *
Stearns points to a number of contemporary phenomena, each of which he considers an expression of parental anxiety. Steans appears to be particularly sensitive to the upward mobility of kids grades. * The New York Review of Books *
(Stearns) has a keen appreciation of what really mattered to 20th-century Americans, in their families and beyond. Indeed, it is his easy command of all that was going on outside the home- and his profound grasp of the connectedness of those larger developments and their consequences for childreaing - that sets his study apart from other histories of the modern American family. * Journal of Social History *
The book is more than a synthesis of existing scholarship. It is a compendium of ideas - some personal, mostly scholarly - about the experience of parenting in the United States since the beginning of the twentieth century. The book is imaginative and thought provoking. * History of Education Quarterly *