The Parent Trap examines the systemic barriers parents face in providing opportunities for their children, and the 'arms race' that ensues. Hilger’s argument that society must expand its responsibility beyond parental efforts is compelling and persuasive. Yet his critique in some degrees doesn't feel like it goes far enough. Curbing the excesses of high-income parenting practices underestimates the need for a broader cultural - dare I say spiritual? - shift about the role of children, parents, and what 'success' ultimately means. Still, a worthwhile contribution to a growing literature on supporting parents.

The Parent Trap proposes an interesting prospective. Hilger divides the tasks of parents into two main focuses: love/care and skill building. Hilger's argument and the premise of this book is that all parents come to parenting with different levels of ability to teach their children skills. Until we invest as a society in providing equality in skill building training to all children, we continue to build inequality and place unreasonable and unachievable burdens on parents. Removing this burden from parents allows them to focus on the aspect of parenting most parents are fully capable of doing and don't need extra training to be able to do: loving and caring for their family. Overall, I believe Hilger does an incredible job in arguing this and providing research to support his statements. It definitely opened my eyes to the lack of investment our government makes into children versus other groups.