Books like this are fine, but it's incorrect (title of book in question notwithstanding) to see them as diagnosing a "national problem." The temptation exists, of course, to find in their stories reflections of a country in which high school students don't eat lunch (no time!), in which parents will not remove themselves from their children's sides, in which kids are coddled and pampered and showered with gold stars for the straight-A's they receive. But what really ail U.S. youth are not the products of too much parental involvement, but the products of not enough parental involvement--more specifically, not enough solid guidance from adults (teachers, coaches, mentors, etc.).
The reviewer??makes another smart point:
...even as parents obsessively strap bike helmets on their kids' heads and squirt antiseptic gels on their hands, the adults themselves cavalierly break up families with divorce and tolerate the rampant sexualization of prepubescent girls. In short, we're focusing on the wrong risks.
True. What most worries me, though: Did they really wrap up that kid in yellow caution tape?