We live in an age of hyper-parenting, where a child is the ultimate validation of an adult's ego and the little time they have to spend with them must be "quality time". There is little room for deviance, boredom or unplanned curiosity in the modern child's routine, especially when the parents return home from long hours at work.

This same scrupulously fed child turned out to be the one of four children who was constantly sick — eventually requiring daily antibiotics to stave off the many infections that plagued her. In time, her health problems were traced to a genetic immune deficiency, which she eventually outgrew — as her mother also outgrew that naive conviction that life could be controlled and shaped by her own intensive efforts. That sincere, well-intentioned belief is the essence of hyper-parenting.

While older teens were making America miserable, the infants checking out of maternity wards were the "Millennial'' babies born in 1982 and after. These babies, the flip side to the 13th Generation, would experience hyper-parenting — academic preschools, school uniforms, strict curfews.