The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children, by Alison Gopnik, The Bodley Head, RRP￡18.99/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, RRP$26, 320 pages
The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child, by Paula Fass, Princeton University Press, RRP$29.95, 352 pages
Parents are struggling, it seems. We are obsessed with the job of “parenting”, trying to mould our children so that they are happy, garlanded with top grades and achievements, and ready to take on the future — even though that future is unknowable to us. Meanwhile, the frightening wider world lurks, chaotically, beyond our control. And to minimise our own fear and worry, we try to protect our young people so that a middle-class childhood now lasts until college, and often beyond.