It was enough that they mended their kids’ clothes, fed them, taught them to do good, and prepared them for the rigors of the world. It was only after parents’ primary obligations to their kids had been completely outsourced—to public schools, to pediatricians, to supermarkets, to the Gap—that the emotional needs of their children came sharply into focus. In Raising America, Ann Hulbert cites the 1930s sociologist Ernest Groves, who observed: “Relieved of having to carry out all the details of child-care in all their ramifications, the family today can concentrate on the more important
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