Reddit reviews The Science of Parenting

> But if the kids are crying because they want attention, and you are too busy/have your hands full, then tough, they just have to cry for a while.

I keep flashing back to a parenting book I read which compared letting your kid/baby cry for extended periods of time to keeping them in a room of toxic fumes, in the sense that long crying jags were causing permanent brain damage. The book also warned of a host of emotional and psychological problems that would be caused by negligent or uninvolved parenting.

Whether that's true or not, it speaks to the modern, 1st-world concerns of parenting: it's not enough that we raise kids who survive and help with the family, they have to be 1) smart and 2) happy. If they aren't, it's proof of bad parents.