Turning Point (Charlie Kirk). Breaking Point (a new book by John Ibbitson and Darrell Bricker). These terms used on the right and the left speak to a need for societal change. In assessing the various problems our society is facing, which are too many to list here, it is entirely reasonable to ask about what is happening in our “first societies”—the families that form us. Not everyone does. But Leonard Sax, author of the newly updated The Collapse of Parenting doesn’t shy away from this question, with his answer embedded in the title of his book. Parenting is something of a lost art. 

We rely on books and experts more than ever. We have names for all the kinds of parenting: helicopter, tiger mom, free range, intensive. There is no shortage of people writing about parenting. Meanwhile, we have Sax asserting that parenting has collapsed. What gives? 

As a family doctor, Sax has stories to tell from seeing interactions between parents and kids in his examining room. There’s the mother who won’t help him get a child’s mouth open to have a throat checked because, the mother explains, “it’s her body, her choice.” There are parents who accept their children telling them to “shut up.” Recently, the New York Times reports that “cannabis poisonings are rising, mostly among kids” because parents have drug-laced candy at home. Parenting alone then has not collapsed. It would seem “adulting” has, as well. 

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When something like parenting becomes deeply contested terrain, it points to a decades-long trend, meaning the problem didn’t start yesterday. Neither do I believe in a golden age of parenting. At the same time, we live in a culture where growing up is difficult. Markers toward adulthood have been all but abandoned. If marriage and family happen at all, life progressions that once compelled a rapid maturation of self, happen much later. The collapse of parenting, unsurprisingly, comes alongside the collapse in fertility. It is difficult to know how to parent when so few are doing it, because we live in a society that no longer feels propagating the species is a worthy endeavour. 

When Sax raises questions about what parents are for, he is in good company. It reminds me of Hold On to Your Kids—Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers, also newly updated in 2024, by two great Canadian authors, Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld. The message, told from a slightly different vantage point, is similar. Maté and Neufeld talk about the “flatlining” of culture being in part the result of parents who believe from earliest ages their presence is inconsequential, creating “an attachment void” which kids fill by learning from their fellow, also immature, peers. Today’s parents were, all too often, themselves raised by their peers. Of course they diminish the power of their own presence. 

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Neither is this phenomenon a problem of money. Higher income parents who outsource every aspect of parenting by hiring people are in the same boat as those who outsource every aspect of parenting simply by leaving kids alone; in both cases, parents are not present. Sax says, some parents actively believe children need to “find their own way.” He calls this a dereliction of duty. 

And if we accept that parents don’t really matter—then we also advance public policy that serves to weaken parental bonds and authority without too much concern. Here we could mention governments advertising daycare as “the best start in life.” Or, more controversially, we could examine parental leave. There is no particular science behind a year’s leave, or 18 months. But because the goal of parental leave is to strengthen workforce attachment, and guarantee a return to work in much the same way as before one had a child, it strengthens the notion that after a very specific length of time, parents both can and should go back to life as it was pre-children. 

Or how about calls to legislate that which cannot be legislated? An otherwise excellent recent article in the UK press about the need to give children a love of reading called out for “urgency from our politicians.” There is no mention at any point in the article of mothers, fathers, or parents. Telling stories to our children has apparently become a matter of public education policy. 

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I offer no advice, merely awareness and encouragement from these various authors that a parent’s presence matters. Sax also says that parents need to prioritize joy and time spent doing things the parent loves and can teach to their children. “Once your kids love you and love being with you,” he says, “parenting is a breeze.” May it be so for parents struggling in the trenches of raising children today. 

Andrea Mrozek is co-author of I…Do? Why Marriage Still Matters and Senior Fellow at Cardus Family