THE VILLAGE IT TAKES. Book Review No. 4 is Mary Eberstadt's Home-Alone America (details or compare prices.) This review will be less comprehensive than the roundup offered at A Constrained Vision: go there and visit the links for more extensive coverage.

The focus of the book is the deleterious effects of greater adult freedom on kids. The Constrained Vision post links to an extended excerpt in Policy Review from Chapter 6 on the reflection of those effects in the angry popular music. Other themes are familiar, including the use of treats to assuage guilt (fat children, fit parents), the use of drugs as a substitute for attention, and the -- not well established -- squeaky wheel phenomenon in which bad behavior becomes the most effective way for neglected kids to get attention.

One development new to me that the book highlights is the specialty boarding school, a contemporary refinement of the old military school (which the well-to-do used for their delinquent spawn: the miscreants from less favored backgrounds had the reformatory) without the uniforms. Ms Eberstadt suggests these "detention archipelagos" are the logical extension of parental absence. The discussion at 11-D suggests that such conclusions are hasty.

Perhaps there is trickle-down economics at work: more people are now well off enough to farm out the raising of their kids, something once reserved for the British Royals, industrialists, and famous entertainers (and note what shining examples of humanity many of those heirs are.) Home-Alone America is not definitive: there remain opportunities for serious research.