America’s youth are in crisis. Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, they are ill-equipped to survive in our highly competitive global economy.
Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the founding – learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant – are being delayed or skipped altogether. The statistics are daunting: 30 percent of college students drop out after the first year, and only four in 10 graduate. One in three 18- to 34-year-olds lives with their parents.
From these disparate phenomena, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who, as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life.
In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can’t grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue – hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body – and explains how parents can encourage them.
Our democracy depends on responsible, contributing adults to function properly – without them America falls prey to populist demagogues. A call to arms, The Vanishing American Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we’re raising our children and the future of our country.
The best I have read about being a parent at this … This is not a political book. It’s a way to rethink how we raise our kids and what is important in their upbringing. I thought this book was really well done. Made me think about what I do well and what I can amend about how I raise my kids. At times, helped me reminisce about how I was brought up too. The best I have read about being a parent at this time in history.
An accidental politician, Sasse doesn’t tell you how he will save you. Rather, how to save yourself – and your kids Ben Sasse is not a typical politician, and he says explicitly that this is not a policy book. He is not telling you how he is going to take care of you. There is no plan to save the world. He describes the many, many ills of our education system with the knowledgeable perspective of the son and husband of teachers – and tells you he is home schooling his children.Â
A fresh perspective on a longstanding problem This book is a personal, family-oriented guide to the socio-political issues that a book like handles on the macro scale. It is a voice of reason and common sense in a time of alternative facts and fake news. It is a reminder of what it is to be human in an increasingly post-human world.Â