New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took some well-deserved ridicule over outlawing tank-size sodas, only to see the ban struck down at the eleventh hour by a judge.  It’s fun to see nanny-state nit-picking take a hit every now and then. The mayor still has battles to fight against unsaturated fats and overweight kids, and we haven’t seen the end of soda-bans, either. But more recently he took on a much bigger threat to the city’s future than Big Gulps.

Every night, 8-year-old Cooper faces his dreaded literature guide.

Little House in the Big Woods is Cooper’s current nemesis. Each afternoon he does his math problems and spelling words with no problem. But when it comes to literature, he cues his tears like an actor on stage. He pounds his head and (I just discovered) stabs his pencil into the kitchen table in frustration.

His wretched state is caused by such intellectually confounding questions as: “What nickname does Pa call Laura?” And, “What instrument does Pa play?”

Parenting is experiencing a major shift, and it has nothing to do with breast feeding, reusable diapers or co-sleeping. It’s the increasing age of the parents behind the stroller, a trend journalist Judith Shulevitz of the New Republic called the “grayest generation.”

Perhaps one of the more unfortunate shifts of the English language in recent years has been the expansion of parent to a verb. Both forms of the word poked like twin sore thumbs from the title of a New York magazine article dated July 4, 2010: “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting.”

The Center for the Next Generation is promoting an effort on behalf of America’s children, Too Small to Fail. The group reports that Ann Romney’s horse got nine times as much attention in the last election than the needs of children did.

Last week I made the mistake of Facebooking my surprise at learning that the kindergartners at the elementary school across the street were participating in Red Ribbon Week, a drug awareness program.

An onslaught of opposing opinions ensued, but this one caught me off guard:

“Don’t be naïve—we live in the world. The sooner we can equip our own children and prepare them for what they may inevitably face once they leave the warmth of our homes, the better off they will be.”

After teaching college for a few years I’ve realized two things: (1) how young adults sincerely want to make their parents proud, and (2) how parents communicate, directly or indirectly, that their children are failures. A previous generation of parents was happy having kids who simply were “good,” but today’s parents want kids who are good and “successful.” And students who have grown up in conservative evangelical churches are not immune from this parental pressure.