by postponing children, many modern parents are far more aware of the freedoms they’re giving up.

That women bring home the bacon, fry it up, serve it for breakfast, and use its greasy remains to make candles for their children’s science projects is hardly news. Yet how parenting responsibilities get sorted out under these conditions remains unresolved. Neither government nor private business has adapted to this reality, throwing the burden bac

And while today’s fathers are more engaged with their children than fathers in any previous generation, they’re charting a blind course, navigating by trial and, just as critically, error. Many

middle parenting years—elementary school mostly—when parents feel immense pressure to prepare their children for an increasingly competitive world, thereby turning afternoons and weekends into a long procession of extracurricular activities.

It takes a lot of ego strength to be in the pit crew. It means ceding some power to your children, for one thing—decisions that were once under your purview move to theirs—and it means receding somewhat, accepting that they’ve recast their lives without you, or your goals, at the center.

that children tended to compromise the psychological health of mothers more than fathers, and of single parents more than married parents.

“During childhood, it’s about trying to help develop who your kid’s going to be. During adolescence, it’s about responding to who your kid wants to be.

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ABOUT adolescence is that it’s a repeat of the toddler years, dominated by a cranky, hungry, rapidly growing child who’s precocious and selfish by turns.

These perennial difficulties are worth dissecting and will certainly play a role in this book. But I am also interested in what’s new and distinctive about modern parenting. There’s no denying that our lives as mothers and fathers have grown much more complex, and we still don’t have a new set of scripts to guide us through them. Normlessness is a