In "The Child Trap," her recent article in The New Yorker, Joan Acocella compares several books on the phenomenon of overparenting. Many writers are apparently worked up about the current generation of children and parents. According to these experts, parents are too focused on their children’s activities and achievements, too eager to bend rules to achieve success, and too selfish to help anyone less fortunate.

See these books for more on that:

The Price of Privilege: how parental pressure and material advantage are creating a generation of disconnected and unhappy kids by Madeline Levine

Boys Adrift : the five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men by Leonard Sax

Acocella looks more closely at two pop psychology titles: A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estroff Marano and Under Pressure: rescuing our children from the culture of hyper-parenting by Carl Honore. These two books focus on the horrendous results of overparenting your babies, your children and even your college graduates, mainly blaming working mothers and the insecurities of the global economy as the cause. She finally points us to Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood by Steven Mintz to give us some perspective on the situation.

Advice and opinion on child-rearing seem ever-focused on the latest crisis or study being reported in the media. A quick survey of the library shelves confused me even more. So, what is a new mother to believe? How do I decide what is “the right thing to do”?

And can parenting books point me in the right direction, or will they only lead me astray?