All Joy and No Fun

Today parents pour more capital—both emotional and literal—into their children than ever before, and they’re spending longer, more concentrated hours with their children than they did when the workday ended at five o’clock and the majority of women still stayed home.

It takes a lot of ego strength to be in the pit crew. It means ceding some power to your children, for one thing—decisions that were once under your purview move to theirs—and it means receding somewhat, accepting that they’ve recast their lives without you, or your goals, at the center.

middle parenting years—elementary school mostly—when parents feel immense pressure to prepare their children for an increasingly competitive world, thereby turning afternoons and weekends into a long procession of extracurricular activities.

“During childhood, it’s about trying to help develop who your kid’s going to be. During adolescence, it’s about responding to who your kid wants to be.

in 2008, 72 percent of college-educated women between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine had not yet had children.

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And while today’s fathers are more engaged with their children than fathers in any previous generation, they’re charting a blind course, navigating by trial and, just as critically, error. Many

by postponing children, many modern parents are far more aware of the freedoms they’re giving up.

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM ABOUT adolescence is that it’s a repeat of the toddler years, dominated by a cranky, hungry, rapidly growing child who’s precocious and selfish by turns.