One of the most essential and mundane of human activities - taking care of children - requires high levels of anxious vigilance.... [Parents] dare not risk assuming that the sudden quiet from the toddlers' room means they are studying with Baby Einstein. Visualize fratricidal stranglings and electric outlets stabbed with forks: this is how we have reproduced our genomes.

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (ed. Metropolitan Books, 2009) - ISBN: 9781429942539