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Ms Winn's book is a clarion call to American parents. Its thesis, succinctly contained in the title, is as follows: since the 1960s a radical change has occurred in the way American society treats children and in the behaviour of children themselves. Adults have abandoned their traditional role of protectors of childhood innocence and encouraged an early involvement in adult concerns, thus transforming the image of childhood from one that deserves protection to one that justifies their own sometimes monstrous abandonment of children. In the last few decades there are signs among adults of increasing ambivalence, if not hostility, towards children (seen in films depicting child pornography, prostitution and satanic juveniles). Current child-rearing trends which emphasize equality and shared decision-making have helped to produce children who are often more difficult to live with than their more repressed counterparts, and who may engender murderous wishes in parents.
At the heart of parental loss of control lies the fact that parents today supervise their school-age children less than would have been the case a generation ago, as a result of the increase of two-career families and divorce — currently one in two couples in the U.S.A. The combination of unsupervised children and a permissive, highly charged sexual atmosphere, particuarly disseminated by television, and the influx of easily acquired drugs, has led to a generation of what Ms Winn calls children without childhood (innocence), i.e. prematurely sophisticated out-of-control children and adolescents.