| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 198 words from this article are provided below; about 379 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Child-rearing in America. By Peter N. Stearns. (New York: New York University Press, 2003. xii, 251 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-8147-9829-2.)
Contemporary American parents have been bedeviled by a slew of both new and old anxieties, from molestation to delinquency and poor school performance. In this timely and engaging book, the prodigiously prolific Peter N. Stearns probes the psyche of contemporary American middle-class parents, exposing their most mundane and profound parental preoccupations. By turns amusing and sobering, the book presents a sometimes unflattering depiction of parents beset by fears, in spite of the relative safety and prosperity their children enjoy in comparison with prior generations.	1
Stearns succeeds in appealing to a popular audience by writing in a lively style, providing limited documentation, and deftly moving between past and present in each chapter. He argues that our images of children have shifted from sturdy to vulnerable, even as such plagues as infant and child mortality have subsided. Improvements in health and our standard of living have had unintended consequences, Stearns avers, by raising the bar for parents in their quest to provide their children with a trouble-free childhood.	. . .

There are about 379 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.