LEADER 00000pam  2200337 i 4500 
003    DLC 
005    20210430150959.7 
008    200723s2021    nyu      b    001 0 eng   
010      2020030905 
020    9781541645592|q(hardcover) 
040    DLC|beng|erda|cDLC|dIMmBT|dUtOrBLW 
042    pcc 
043    n-us--- 
092    649.1|bFEE 
100 1  Feeney, Matt,|eauthor. 
245 10 Little platoons :|ba defense of family in a competitive 
       age /|cMatt Feeney. 
250    First edition. 
264  1 New York :|bBasic Books,|c2021. 
300    vii, 303 pages ;|c22 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-281) and 
       index. 
505 00 |tIntroduction --|tParenting in public --|tGetting into 
       preschool --|tNot playing around --|tParents, kids, and 
       the internet --|tSchools and families --|tStriving 
       together --|tIndividually selected --|tConclusion. 
520    "Middle-class American life is defined by relentless 
       competition among families, waged from elite preschools to
       youth sports to selective universities. The lengths to 
       which parents will go to give their children a leg up have
       become notorious: ostentatious birthday parties to wow the
       neighbors, fistfights on the soccer sidelines over playing
       time, criminal conspiracies to cheat at college 
       admissions. Such excesses make it easy to say that parents
       must just calm down and act more reasonably. But this 
       simplistic advice misses the deep social dynamics that 
       draw today's well-meaning parents into an endless race 
       against other families, says Matt Feeney, a political 
       theorist and an anxious stay-at-home father of three. In 
       Little Platoons, he identifies and explains these powerful
       forces, and he urges parents to reawaken to families' 
       unique social role and recognize their singular potential 
       as a source of resistance. Today's parents, Feeney shows, 
       operate within self-sustaining feedback loops of 
       competitive worry. Their natural vigilance turns into a 
       fixation on worst-case scenarios about their children's 
       future prospects in an uncertain world. All around them, 
       they see their worried fellow parents adopt an intensive 
       approach to parenting, in which admission to the most 
       prestigious possible college looms as the long-term goal. 
       Fearing their children will be left behind, parents look 
       for advantage wherever they can. They scramble for entry 
       into competitive preschools, sit with their kids through 
       long hours of homework, hit the road every weekend for 
       sports tournaments, and buy phones and tablets marketed as
       essential to success. In so doing, parents feel no choice 
       but to set aside their own priorities and values; they 
       alter their lives and the inner workings of their homes to
       suit the needs and whims of schools, sports leagues, 
       social media companies, and college admissions officers. 
       The web of voluntary associations that once made civil 
       society a bulwark of liberty has become, instead, a series
       of gatekeepers who demand compliance in exchange for small
       margins of advantage. In the face of all of this, Feeney 
       argues, families are politically invaluable. At its best, 
       the intense solidarity of family life fosters an 
       alternative set of values and sources of meaning. If we 
       remember this, families offer a standpoint from which to 
       critique and to reject our hyper-competitive, zero-sum 
       society and the inhuman, implacable, indifferent systems 
       that shape it. Blending original reporting, penetrating 
       social analysis, and humorous, self-deprecating stories of
       Feeney's own struggles to stay calm as a parent amid the 
       absurdities of Bay Area tech-boom, Little Platoons is 
       unexpected and essential reading for anyone raising kids 
       today"--|cProvided by publisher. 
650  0 Parenting|zUnited States. 
650  0 Families|zUnited States. 
650  0 Competition (Psychology)|xSocial aspects. 
650  0 Social status.