View the Table of Contents.
;Read the Preface.
"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"
"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"
"Anxiety is the hallmark of contemporary parenting. Today's
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
"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"
"Stearns takes readers on tour through a wondrous variety of
twentieth-century worries about children."
--"American Historical 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"
"Engaging and well written."
--"History"
"(Stearns) has a keen appreciation of what really mattered to
20th-century Americans, in their families and beyond. Indeed, itis
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 as useful to scholars as it is informative to the
general public....beautifully written and thoroughly
interesting."
--"Metapsychology Online Book Reviews"
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
anhistoric examination of modern parenting.
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