Book review: The Collapse of Parenting by Leonard Sax

"Sometimes you have to wait before you eat the doughnuts.  Sometimes you don't get to eat the doughnuts at all.  That's life."

The nineteenth book I read in 2016 was The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups by Leonard Sax.  There is nothing new or groundbreaking in this book.  It diagnoses the same sorts of problems many other right-of-center parenting books point to: lack of parental authority, the unexamined conceit that that which is newer is also therefore better, a culture which celebrates disrespect, etc.  Sax is a good writer, though, and tells some enjoyable anecdotes along the way, even if The Simpsons got there first way back in December of 1995: