The Coddling of the American Mind

How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

By: Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff

Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt

A timely investigation into the new "safety culture" on campus and the dangers it poses to free speech, mental health, education, and ultimately democracy

The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility.

The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.

©2018 Greg Lukianoff (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“A disturbing and comprehensive analysis of recent campus trends… Lukianoff and Haidt notice something unprecedented and frightening… The consequences of a generation unable or disinclined to engage with ideas that make them uncomfortable are dire for society, and open the door - accessible from both the left and the right - to various forms of authoritarianism.” (Thomas Chatterton Williams, The New York Times Book Review - cover review and Editors’ Choice selection)

"So how do you create ‘wiser kids’? Get them off their screens. Argue with them. Get them out of their narrow worlds of family, school and university. Boot them out for a challenging Gap year. It all makes perfect sense…the cure seems a glorious revelation." (Philip Delves Broughton, Evening Standard)

“Perhaps the strongest argument in Haidt and Lukianoff’s favour...is this: if you see this issue as being about little more than a few sanctimonious teenagers throwing hissy fits on campus then, yes, it is probably receiving too much attention. But if you accept their premise, that it’s really a story about mental wellbeing and emotional fragility, about a generation acting out because it has been set up to fail by bad parenting and poorly designed institutions, then their message is an urgent one. And it is one that resonates well beyond dusty libraries and manicured quadrangles, into all of our lives.” (Josh Glancy, The Sunday Times (UK))

Enrich Understanding

As a Hockey Coach for the Past 12 years, I have experienced changes with kids of all ages. Bluntly put, the change is NEGATIVE. Kid's ages 5 - through College who I coach and interact with are having more and more trouble with dealing with adversity and that is simply because of the safety nets at every turn of their lives. Moreover, athletes in general tend to be more successful in life because of the life skills learn through sport which directly correlate to the books crucial concepts that help people develop and evolve as thoughtful individuals with comprehensive thought processes. I think every coach, parents and students in HS/College should read this book. Break the cycle of fearing failure. Fail and fail often and continue learning from your experiences to develop yourself and your mind.

An even handed evidence based approach

The book is written in an even handed unemotional manner, it relies heavily on scientific evidence rather than ideological speculation, and offers actionable items to address the problem both at a personal and societal level.

Extremely Important Book

Few books have struck me as significantly as "Coddling" has.

This is not just an important book for educators, students, parents or lawmakers - although all of those people should absolutely read this book - this book is for everyone who wants to start to bring America back together and end the worsening political and partisan divides.

I am going to evangelize this book like the gospel.

A necessary perspective and a must read for parents and educators.

This is a book about wisdom and its opposite,” write Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind. “It is a book about three psychological principles and about what happens to young people when parents and educators—acting with the best of intentions—implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles. The Coddling of the American Mind grew out of the increased support among college students for censorship of controversial opinions, a trend that Lukianoff began to notice in the fall of 2013.
Lukianoff and Haidt unfold their argument in three parts: Part I, “Three Bad Ideas,” looks at “three Great Untruths”:

1. The Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings
3. The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battled Between Good People and Evil People

Taken together, these untruths result in “a culture of safetyism” on campus, whereby students must be protected from opposing opinions that might “harm” their “safety,” no longer defined as physical safety but now as emotional safety too.

The results of this culture of safetyism, ironically enough, are intimidation and violence on the one hand and witch hunts on the other, as the Lukianoff and Haidt argue in Part II, “Bad Ideas in Action.”
Part III, “How Did We Get Here?,” Lukianoff and Haidt identify “six interacting explanatory threads”:

rising political polarization and cross-part animosity; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression; changes in parenting practices; the decline of free play; the growth of campus bureaucracy; and a rising passion for justice in response to major national events, combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.
This book really resonated with me as an educator in a mostly affluent but mixed income school. Coddling is hurting the quality of education and college readiness. Despite agreeing with most of the contents of this book. I am concerned about how the arguments made in regards to micro aggression might be used by people of privilege to dismiss the hurt and stress they cause minorities on a daily basis. Micro aggressive words or actions do not cause physical harm but do impact peoples’ health, stress levels and blood pressure. It’s a burden people of color endeavor through on their journey to pursuit happiness. I thought this section of the book could’ve been handled with more care and well-rounded perspective.

Fantastic Book

If you seek context for today's social climate, this will help you immensely. The writing is unpretentious, edifying, and a joy to listen to. The narrator does a bang up job. Stop not listening to this book and listen to it, then, feed your children peanut products.

Informational with a dash of conscious bias

The majority of the book was extremely useful and informative. I really believe the authors are knowledgeable and we'll meaning. The only thing I didn't enjoy wasn the glaringly disingenuous comparison between President Trump's worst points of Administration and President Obama's best points his Administration. It took away from the fact based presentation of the information and came across hypocritical when purporting to present an unbiased presentation of fact when it was clearly opinion based. I am not Trump advocate by any means but believe when presenting information as a matter of fact we should all present from an position of fact, not opinion.

Other than the glaring disparity of conscious bias between Presidents, the book was fantastic and very well put together and presented.

An absolute must-read

Can't wait to listen to it again. Might even get the paper copy for reference material.

Excellent work.

Incredible writing and narration. This book should be a required read for young adults and parents.

Everyone needs to read this!

Everyone needs to read this book. It’s so interesting and enlightening. There is a serious problem with the way people are acting out today and this book brings that to light.

Terrific read for parents and grandparents for sure

Scary stats ... Jonathan Haidt lays out on the front lawn what we are ignoring - then points a floodlight so at night they remain illuminated - and then shows solutions to correct the damaging coddling

yes I was raised to be self reliant and resourceful - that was cool - yet at the time I thought normal
Now my teen grandchildren have to face the day—they truly deserve to experience—without hand held technology. Thank you JH FOR SHOWING US what is happening to a population of struggling-to-grow minds ...and how Shocking some schools are behaving - just bought the book for all my adult children. It’s a must read.