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    The 'Over-Parenting Crisis' In School And At Home

    Cutting kids' meat or doing their laundry can undermine their sense of self-worth, two books argue.
    by Anya Kamenetz Jul 24, 2018 5 minutes
    Source: LA Johnson

    A version of this interview ran in 2015.

    Have you ever paid your kid for good grades? Have you driven to school to drop off an assignment that they forgot? Have you done a college student's laundry? What about coming along to Junior's first job interview?

    These examples are drawn from two bestselling books — How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims and The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey. Both are by women writing from their experiences as parents and as educators. Lahey is a teacher and a writer for The New York Times and The Atlantic, currently at work on a new book about teens and addiction. Lythcott-Haims was the longtime freshman dean at Stanford; in 2017 she published the memoir Real American and is working on a sequel to How to Raise an Adult about "how to be an adult."

    The books make strikingly similar claims about today's youth and their parents:

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