What You'll Learn:

A former dean from Stanford University has written a book about how to cut the umbilical cord that so many young people and parents are afraid to sever. As a parent herself, Lythcott-Haims is sympathetic with the plight, but argues that parents’ over-involvement in their kids’ lives is harming children’s passage into adulthood. One critic has aptly described this book as “the Blackhawk Down of helicopter parenting.”