Table Of ContentHow to Stop Overloading Parents and
Fix Our Inequality Crisis
NATE G. HILGER
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2022 Nate G. Hilger
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic
or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hilger, Nate G., author.
Title: The parent trap : how to stop overloading parents and fix our inequality crisis /
Nate G. Hilger.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021033955 | ISBN 9780262046688 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Child rearing—United States. | Parent and child—United States. |
Child care—United States.
Classification: LCC HQ769 .H5585 2022 | DDC 649/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://Iccn.loc.gov/2021033955
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 «1
To my parents, Judith and Christopher, my wife, Bao, and our son, Felix.
Contents
INTRODUCTION /
1 AN ALTERNATE REALITY 2/
2 WHAT PARENTS REALLY DO 57
3 TEACHING OLD PARENTS NEW TRICKS 85
4 WHY PARENTS CAN’T BUILD SKILLS ON THEIR OWN ///
5 SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND RACIAL INEQUALITY 733
6 GETTING MORE BY ASKING FORLESS 1/65
7 WHY WE DON’T INVEST IN SKILL DEVELOPMENT /89
Appendix 2/5
Acknowledgments 225
Notes 227
Index 287
INTRODUCTION
Over the past 20 years, many industries have spent a great deal of money
on lobbying to support their economic interests. The US Chamber of
Commerce spent $1.5 billion to support business interests. Unions spent
$700 million to back fabor interests. Real estate, health, pharmaceutical,
aviation, and petroleum companies together spent more than $3 billion.
The American Association of Retired People (AARP) spent $300 million to
support elderly people’s interests.’
‘There is one major industry that is not on this list. By many measures,
it is the largest industry in the country. Given its failure to lobby, the indus-
try receives little political support. Its many workers toil in isolation, with-
out recognition or compensation. Their backbreaking labor is not counted
in any official statistics, as if it were secret or illegitimate. The industry has
no centralized organization representing its interests. Relative to its size, it
spends almost nothing on research and development to improve operations
over time. The industry shuffles along at a fraction of its potential capacity,
its participants underutilized, inefficient, overwhelmed.
What is this monumental ghost industry? Parenting.
THE TWO SIDES OF PARENTING
We dont often think of parenting as an “industry” or of parents as “work-
ers, and for good reason. Parents volunteer for the job. They want te do it,
and they’re more than happy to do it for free. In many ways, parenting is
no more a “job” than loving or living. But just because love moves people
to do a job for free doesn’t mean their work isn't producing something of
enormous cultural and economic value. And it is production of that value
that can usefully be thought of, in some respects, as a major industry.
Every year American parents provide full-time, overtime, comprehen-
sive child-development services to Americas 74 million children. If we
value these services at market rate—what it would take to buy the most
comparable services we can find for money—they sum to more than $5
trillion of output every year.” Valued in this way, parenting emerges as the
largest industry in the United States, easily beating out health care in sec-
ond place at less than $4 trillion. So let’s step back for a moment and see
what happens if we view parents as members of a (very) important indus-
try. In this capacity, parents have two main kinds of responsibilities.
One of these responsibilities is to care for children. Caring is the more
personal side of parenting. In this role, parents do their best to love chil-
dren, protect them, provide for them, bring them joy, and comfort them
against life's many slings and arrows. In their caring role, parents also pass
along cherished cultural practices, rituals, and faiths to enrich their chil-
dren’s lives.
The second responsibility of parents is to build skills in children. This
is the more professional side of parenting. In this role, parents manage
complex investments in all aspects of children’s skill growth. Skills go far
beyond “book smarts” such as math and reading. They include general
skills such as strength and dexterity, confidence and wit, tenacity and disci-
pline. They also include more specific skills, such as how to play football or
tennis, chess or guitar, how to fix a flat tire or build a campfire. These and
so many other skills equip children to flourish independently in adulthood.
As a form of wealth, skills are “assets.” All assets yield a ow of economic
value to their owners over time. Stocks, for example, yield dividends and
capital gains. Real estate yields rents. Cars yield transportation services. Skills
yield value in the form of higher income, career satisfaction, health, and fun.
Despite their diversity, all skills have some key things in common that
distinguish them from other kinds of assets. Perhaps the most important
and strange feature of skills is that they are taught and learned rather than
2 Introduction
