Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America

"Stearns . . . argues that over the course of the twentieth century, a kind of down-home, common-sense confidence in the basic sturdiness of children in general was replaced by an idea of the child as psychologically and socially vulnerable."
—Ruminator Review

"Grounded in research, this study offers insights into such school-related developments as the rise of grade inflation, the growth of parental ambivalence toward the schools, and the influence of escapist entertainment on learning and social development."
—Education Week

"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

"Stearns has put a lot of thought into this dense but elegantly argued and thoroughly researched volume, and it should become a classic in the study of American childhood."
— Publishers Weekly

"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

"It's a shame that many new parents may not have time to read Peter N. Stearn's Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America."
— The Atlantic Monthly

"Stearns is a prolific historian."
— The Chicago Tribune

"Recommended."
—CHOICE

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children?

Peter N. Stearns explains this phenomenon by examining the new issues the twentieth century brought to bear on families. Surveying popular media, "expert" childrearing manuals, and newspapers and journals published throughout the century, Stearns shows how schooling, physical and emotional vulnerability, and the rise in influence of commercialism became primary concerns for parents. The result, Stearns shows, is that contemporary parents have come to believe that they are participating in a culture of neglect and diminishing standards. Anxious Parents: A Modern History of Childrearing in America shows the reasons for this belief through an historic examination of modern parenting.