This title offers an international and historical look at how parenting choices change in the face of economic inequality. Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, American and Chinese parents are increasingly authoritative and authoritarian, whereas Scandinavian parents tend to be more permissive. Why? This book investigates how economic forces and growing inequality shape how parents raise their children. From medieval times to the present, and from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden to China and Japan, the authors look at how economic incentives and constraints-such as money, knowledge, and time-influence parenting practices and what is considered good parenting in different countries. Discussions of social mobility and education, plus personal anecdotes and original research present an engrossing look at the economics of the family in the modern world.