Pun Salad

I find that I'm reading a disproportionate amount of non-fiction books by woman authors with the initials A. S.: Amity Shlaes, Allison Schrager, and now here's Abigail Shrier. Funny coincidence, or a bug in the simulation?

Also: Shrier's first book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was the target of a cancellation campaign back in 2020. One of the lead cancellation advocates was an ACLU lawyer! (Is that ironic?)

And I note that, while I found this book at the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, they do not carry Irreversible Damage. Which means it probably will not show up in their prominent "Banned Books Week" display this year, or any other year. (I'm pretty sure that's ironic.)

Anyway, this book: Shrier's subject is the psychological damage to children caused by mental health professionals, semi-professionals, and (yes) even some parents. This isn't a new phenomenon; one of my wise-cracking middle school teachers back in the 1960s occasionally smirkingly remarked that he "didn't want to give us a complex" after expressing even an innocuous opinion.

But Shrier argues that it's gotten worse, and she backs up her argument with plenty of evidence of "iatrogenic" harm to the kiddos. The incentives involved in the mental health industry are all wrong, she (convincingly) says; quirks are magnified into neuroses, everyday disappointments blow up into major trauma, "surveys" are performed that normalize destructive behavior, and more.

My take: A good book for parents to read. And maybe teachers too. But Shrier was pushing on an open door in my case; some of the negative Amazon reviews accuse her of cherry-picking data, misinterpreting/misrepresenting the sources she cites, and so on. Since my kids are in their 30s, and I haven't been in a classroom for a couple decades, I'm not motivated enough to judge.