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Through the author's own original field research, a surprising picture of the moral development of children emerges to confirm that parents' intense focus on their children's happiness is turning many children into self-involved, fragile conformists who feel ashamed when they fail to measure up.

What he found is that, while poverty and racial prejudice contribute greatly to the disadvantage of millions of children, in fact most children at risk are not poor, and there is much evidence to suggest that factors such as chronic parental stress and depression have a more powerful influence on a child's fate than whether or not there are two parents in the home or whether or not the family lives below the poverty line.