Parenting Out of Control (Extra Book)

Parenting Out of Control

by Margaret K. Nelson

Thanks to Kristin Balicki for sharing this book as part of the preparation for Pre-College students at NYU.  She used the books to prepare staff who will interact with parents and their high school students coming to NYU this summer.  The book is called Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times by Margaret Nelson, a sociologist at Middlebury College specializing in parenting.  The book is the result of a study of 97 parents across socio-economic backgrounds and various regions of the United States to better understand how they “manage” the relationship between them and their children.  Her question focused on the motivation of parents who were adamant about knowing their child’s every move and would buy into any technology that secured that knowledge.  She then wondered if these were the same parents who were engaged in hyper vigilant practices – so controlling of their children and unwilling to launch them into adulthood. Nelson clearly did her homework given the hundreds of citations throughout the book.  My critique of the book is that it is rather redundant.  After she answers the questions early in chapter two, the rest of the book continues to answer the same question.  The final conclusion? Middle class parents who work in professions considered to be “white-collar” seem to be more hands off than lower socio-economic class parents who have more to worry about their children because they aren’t there to watch them.  OK.…  97 parents being interviewed made for a pretty generalizable study?  I’ll leave that for the reader to decide.  I was hoping for a bit more information on the parenting piece.  The info on the latest technology parents could use was quite robust.  In many ways, I felt like it was a book more about the technology and what was working/not working for parents.  Ho-hum…. Read the conclusion, probably all you need to read.