The Assault on Parenthood
How Our Culture Undermines the Family
(amazon)Dana Mack (View Bio)
Hardcover: Simon & Schuster, 1997; Paperback: Encounter Books, 2000.
"This intensively researched book unveils in a terrifying way the insidious undermining of families not only by our own culture, but by various institutions of government.... Read it and scare yourself into action." — Indianapolis Star
"The declining well being of America's children has left us asking ourselves, in what by now is a kind of shorthand: What has gone wrong with 'the culture'? Dana Mack's answer is contained in the title of her excellent book, THE ASSAULT ON PARENTHOOD." — The Wall Street Journal
"THE ASSAULT ON PARENTHOOD brings together all the evidence anyone could demand to show that there is a cultural war being waged against the notion that children are to be raised by their parents." — The Washington Times
"Return parenting to parents. That's the message of this thoughtful and challenging attack on the 'nanny state.' Liberal and conservative ideologues alike will flinch as Mack variously assails and defends government and intellectuals for their roles in reshaping the family.... [S]he does children and harried parents a service by assembling in one volume vivid accounts of the varied political and social forces that are damaging families today." — Kirkus Reviews
"Mack invaluably summarizes one huge current of contemporary dissent. Many middle-class and working-poor U.S. parents feel that the schools, the courts, and the welfare system are alienating them from their kids. Those institutions, they say, use such things as sex education, counseling, and mainstreaming (of special needs children into classrooms) to turn kids into acquiescent consumers in a homogenized commercial culture and they will forcibly separate children from their parents.... This perspective may sound paranoid, but Mack musters history, research, and analysis, as well as the inevitable horror stories, to make it ring with credibility and seriousness. Far surpassing all the banter about 'family values,' this is current-issues writing at its best." — Booklist
"A fiesty conservative examination of an important topic." — USA Today
