Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting

This incisive treatise from sociologist Bandelj (Money Talks) explores the all-consuming nature of contemporary parenting. Parents are encouraged to treat their children as investment projects they must extensively finance and labor over, she argues, noting that before the 20th century, children worked to support families, but this shifted with the passage of child labor laws and a post-WWII boom in parenting advice manuals from experts like Dr. Benjamin Spock, who emphasized children’s emotional development. This gave rise to “intensive parenting” in the 2000s, in which parents sought to elevate their children’s well-being—organizing their lives around extracurriculars and enrolling them in elite schools—but often at the expense of parents’ finances, time, and mental health. The “privatization of childrearing,” along with a lack of social supports like universal child care, increasingly means that a handful of families flourish while the rest fall through the cracks. Bandelj’s research shows, however, that a less obsessive approach to parenting benefits kids as well as parents. To regain balance, she recommends replacing some of children’s expensive academic and recreational lessons with unstructured time to promote independence, as well as advocating for social policy changes and shifting some household chores back to kids. Supported by thorough research, Bandelj’s account persuasively demonstrates that modern parenting is untenable and society must radically reimagine its approach. It’s an urgent reckoning for American parents. (Jan.)