It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Coddling of the American Mind

The Coddling of the American Mind

How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Summary

The New York Times bestseller

Financial Times, TLS, Evening Standard, New Statesman Books of the Year

'Excellent, their advice is sound . . . liberal parents, in particular, should read it' Financial Times

Have good intentions, over-parenting and the decline in unsupervised play led to the emergence of modern identity politics and hypersensitivity?

In this book, free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt investigate a new cultural phenomenon of "safetyism", beginning on American college campuses in 2014 and spreading throughout academic institutions in the English-speaking world.

Looking at the consequences of paranoid parenting, the increase in anxiety and depression amongst students and the rise of new ideas about justice, Lukianoff and Haidt argue that well-intended but misguided attempts to protect young people are damaging their development and mental health, the functioning of educational systems and even democracy itself.

Reviews

  • Excellent . . . their advice is sound . . . liberal parents, in particular, should read it
    Edward Luce, Financial Times

About the authors

Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind.
Learn More

Greg Lukianoff

Greg Lukianoff is a lawyer, First Amendment expert and President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He is the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind and the author of Unlearning Liberty and Freedom From Speech.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more