A profile in the Rutland Herald of Margaret K. Nelson, author of Parenting Out of Control.
Nelson said that much writing on the phenomenon tends to dismiss modern parents’ anxieties, sometimes unfairly. “People talk about a culture of fear,” she said. “I think there are real things for people to worry about, but they’re different for different groups of parents.”
Urban low-income children, for instance, tend to face ever-present dangers of street crime. “These are real problems,” she said. “When people talk about a culture of fear, they pooh-pooh it, as if all these fears are imaginary. There are real dangers.”
