The Cost of Perfection: How Overparenting is Hurting Our Kids

AEI Senior Fellow Timothy P. Carney challenges modern parenting strategies that prioritize over-scheduling, intense academic pressure, and material success. Drawing from years of research and his own experience as a father of six, Carney reveals how the relentless drive for perfection is harming both parents and children, leading to skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and burnout. How should parents, policymakers, and believers, respond to the troubling trends Carney identifies?

Timothy P. Carney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on civil society, family, localism, religion in America, economic competition, and electoral politics. He is concurrently a senior columnist at the Washington Examiner.

Mr. Carney’s new book, Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be, was published by HarperCollins in March 2024. He is also the author of Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse (HarperCollins, 2019), which was a Washington Postbestseller; Obamanomics (Regnery Publishing, 2009); and The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), which was awarded the 2008 Culture of Enterprise award by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

In addition to his Washington Examiner columns, Mr. Carney has been published widely, including in the Atlantic, National Review, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. His television appearances include CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour.

Mr. Carney has a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis.