Ties That Stress

by David Elkind

What has happened to the American family in the last few decades? And what are these changes doing to our children? A renowned child psychologist and author of several influential works on child development, David Elkind has devoted his career to these urgent questions. This eloquent book - the culmination of his inquiry - puts together all the pieces, puzzling facts, and conflicting accounts, and shows us as never before what the American family has become. Today's postmodern family is under enormous stress. And as a result, the needs of hurried children have been sacrificed to the needs of their harried parents. Childhood innocence has been supplanted by the illusion of childhood competence; teenage immaturity has given way to pseudo-sophistication; and parental intuition has been traded in for a mechanical reliance on technique. These changes and a host of others have undermined the well-being of children and adolescents. From Freud to Friedan to Foucault, Elkind traces the roots of