Product Description

Wake up, America: We’re raising a nation of wimps.

Hara Marano, editor-at-large and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has been watching a disturbing trend: kids are growing up to be wimps. They can’t make their own decisions, cope with anxiety, or handle difficult emotions without going off the deep end. Teens lack leadership skills. College students engage in deadly binge drinking. Graduates can’t even negotiate their own salaries without bringing mom or dad in for a consult. Why? Because hothouse parents raise teacup children—brittle and breakable, instead of strong and resilient. This crisis threatens to destroy the fabric of our society, to undermine both our democracy and economy. Without future leaders or daring innovators, where will we go? So what can be done?

kids would play in the street until their mothers hailed them for supper, and unless a child was called into the principal’s office, parents and teachers met only at organized conferences. Nowadays, parents are involved in every aspect of their children’s lives—even going so far as using technology to monitor what their kids eat for lunch at school and accompanying their grown children on job interviews. What is going on?

Hothouse parenting has hit the mainstream—with disastrous effects. Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the lumps and bumps out of life for their children, but the net effect of parental hyperconcern and scrutiny is to make kids more fragile. When the real world isn’t the discomfort-free zone kids are accustomed to, they break down in myriad ways. Why is it that those who want only the best for their kids wind up bringing out the worst in them? There is a mental health crisis on college campuses these days, with alarming numbers of students engaging in self-destructive behaviors like binge drinking and cutting or disconnecting through depression.

A Nation of Wimps is the first book to connect the dots between overparenting and the social crisis of the young. Psychology expert Hara Marano reveals how parental overinvolvement hinders a child’s development socially, emotionally, and neurologically. Children become overreactive to stress because they were never free to discover what makes them happy in the first place.

Through countless hours of painstaking research and interviews, Hara Marano focuses on the whys and how of this crisis and then turns to what we can do about it in this thought-provoking and groundbreaking book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44438 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-15
• Released on: 2008-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767924030
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Marano, editor-at-large at Psychology Today and author (Why Doesn't Anybody Like Me? A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids), takes a penetrating look at the growing trend of invasive parenting. Marano likens many parents to hovering helicopters or snowplows trying to remove all obstacles. The unfortunate result is that children become increasingly fragile, unable to make decisions or cope with failure. Interspersing her text with interviews from experts and cutting-edge research, Marano follows the trail from heavily programmed preschoolers and overprotected grade school kids to stressed out, overachieving high school students and dependent college kids caught in a rising campus mental health crisis (thanks to cellphones, the new umbilical cord, they carry their parents in their jeans pockets). Rather than helping children to find success and happiness, the author argues, this over-involvement has exploded into a generation of infantilized wimps who can't handle everyday life. Instead, she advises, help your kids fail—more is learned from mistakes than from success, including critical thinking skills. The book is chock-full of fascinating information, some of it controversial, such as a suspected link between a diagnosis of ADHD and insufficient free play in the early years. Marano's dire warning to back off will hit a raw nerve with many parents, but her message may come not a moment too soon for their kids. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Most of us agree that some parents are overbearing and that their children may be both fragile and burdened as a result. Ms. Marano, you had us at 'wimps.'" —The Wall Street Journal

"A scathing commentary on contemporary parenting." —The Boston Globe


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Hara Estroff Marano is an award-winning writer and editor-at-large for Psychology Today. Her articles have appeared in many other publications including, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, Wilson Quarterly, USA Today, Smithsonian, and Ladies’ Home Journal. She writes a regular advice column for Psychology Today, called Unconventional Wisdom, and is a columnist for msn.com and an international edition of Marie Claire. She is also the author of Why Doesn’t Anybody Like Me?: A Guide to Raising Socially Confident Kids. Marano sits on the board of the Bringing Therapy to Practice Project. The mother of two grown sons, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Important book riddled with hyperbole, anecdotal evidence
Invasive parenting is a thought provoking topic that, as a parent, I wanted to explore. I willingly bought into Marano's thesis that "hothouse" parenting is prevalent and problematic. But recurring problems plagued Marano's arguments throughout the book and turned this believer into a skeptic.

Let me first say that this book makes a lot of sensational claims that, to be credible, must be backed-up with either statistics or expert opinion. And that's where Marano's treatise begins to struggle.

Ms. Marano saturates most of her chapters with hyperbole dressed as fact. By chapter 8, she's making claims that seem fantastic beyond belief. After a few dozen lines like, "By all accounts, psychological distress is rampant on college campuses," you start wondering if it's really as bad as she claims or if Marano is exaggerating because she believes we won't respond to her fire unless it's a 4-alarmer. She throws out what seem to be big numbers, but seldom contrasts them with numbers from 20, 30 or 40 years ago, so it's hard to assess trends (though Marano assures us that things are much worse today than ever before).

So to settle the question, you have to appeal to her evidence, which is too often thin and/or suspect. Marano has an affinity for the anecdotal: "I have talked to counselors and directors of campus counseling centers across the country. From every single one I heard horror stories of sexual and psychological abuse." Not that I don't believe Ms. Marano, but a serious claim like that needs a foundation--names, numbers, specific examples--and she often provides none.

To be sure, the book has a decent sized bibliography, but it's chuck-full of a small handful of fellow psychologists that she cites over and over. Worse yet, she frequently cites herself as an evidential reference! Yikes! For example, in the "by all accounts" line I quoted above, she only cites two accounts, one of which is an article that she wrote for a magazine. She even references her writing (sans page numbers) in Nation of Wimps. That's right, the book cites itself in it's own bibliography. Unbelievable! If the book is its own evidence, why bother with a bibliography? Don't get me wrong, home cooking is good...when it's food.

I really wanted to get behind this book, but it just doesn't pass the smell test. I think she's got some good points around an important, timely topic (and some good suggestions in the last chapter), for which I'll give her 3 stars. But after reading her book, I'm convinced that Marano went for effect over facts. The sensationalism and suspect evidence were too much for me.

Makes a good article, not a book
I was initially drawn to this book based on the blurb on the cover. While I agree with the author that there are an increasing number of children in the US similiar to those she profiles in her book, the author sums up the bulk of her research and general thoughts on this topic in the first chapter. The remaining chapters are a move fleshed out version of chapter one. Several times I felt that the sentences I was reading were verbatim the ones set out in the first chapter! I was looking for a bit more depth.
The author concludes with a chapter on what parents can and should do to prevent raising their children in this manner. The recommendations are not anything that I (or most readers) would not have guessed before picking up the book. If you are interested in this book, read the first and last chapters and you won't have missed anything from the chapters in between.

Must Reading for Parents, Counselors, Teachers, Administrators, and Anyone!
As a university student affairs administrator for 38 years, I have observed generational changes over the years and the change, over about the past decade, in the role and involvement of parents. In "A Nation of Wimps," Hara Marano has produced an extraordinary analysis of the phenomenon of the invasive parent and how that parent has marched through the K-12 halls, over the walls of college ivy, and on into the job interview and orientation rooms. This book is filled with remarkable insight, skillful analysis, illustrative quotes, and poignant examples. Marano has convincingly argued a case for the "benefits of the skinned knee" and the pitfalls of the helicopter, stealth bomber, and snowplow parent. This book is must reading for all who care about the positive development and growth of children and the generations to come.