Home-Alone America: Why Today's Kids Are Overmedicated, Overweight, and More Troubled Than Ever Before

A few decades ago, most families were intact. Most children came home to a mother who monitored their diets, watched over their social lives and provided the basics in emotional nurturing. But today, most mothers work outside the home and many fathers are unmarried or divorced, often living far away. As a result, too many kids now feel like just another chore to be outsourced - dropped off at daycare, handed over to a nanny, plopped in front of a TV or the Internet.

In Home-Alone America, scholar Mary Eberstadt offers hard data proving that absent parents are the common denominator of many recent epidemics, including obesity, STDs, attention deficit disorder, and the use of psychiatric medications on even very young children.

Eberstadt transcends the rhetoric of the 'mommy wars' by asking a tougher question than that of individual fulfillment: What is the cumulative effect of the modern adult exodus from the home? Have we already reached a tipping point in this society of unattended children and teenagers? And if so, what does that mean for our future?