Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America

Explores iconic works from The Cat in the Hat to The Twilight Zone to explain cultural trends in parenting and how we conceptualize childhood

The 60s produced a Baby Boom generation that catalyzed the dawn of a new era—the space age, the age of television, the global age, and the beginnings of civil rights. At the same time, a new paradigm for parenting was unfolding that put emphasis on permissiveness, defined by what it permitted – the free and unfettered impulses of children. Others worri...