On its 40th anniversary, it is instructive to read Midge Decter’s utterly immediate and yet classic Liberal Parents, Radical Children (1975). The immediacy comes from her observations about what was then a new way of childrearing, the effects of which have lasted and are prevalent today. At the same time, some of her analysis, especially having to do with the academy, serves as more of a starting point for recognizing how much things have changed for the worse.
Decter set out to define, analyze, and indict the generation of parents that raised the baby boomers. She admits that she is focused on a minority of parents, but she is also clearly representing what was a turning point in American life. As Decter explained at the time to People magazine, she was part of the liberal elite she describes in the book—although she credits her husband with preventing her from parenting like them. She was spurred to write when she read that the suicide rate among children had exploded 250 percent between 1960 and 1972. And she was moved when, after 28 bodies were discovered murdered by a Texas serial killer, she “learned that thousands of parents from around the country called the Houston police to learn if their runaways were among the corpses being dug up. . . . All these kids belonged to somebody.”
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