Your Anxious Child
Your Anxious Child
Edward Plimpton
Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting: Interview with Nina Bandelj, PhD
51 minutes Posted Jun 8, 2026 at 6:30 pm.
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Nina Bandelj is Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and past president of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Today we talked about her new book Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting

Dr Bandelj looks at the problem of parental burnout and "intensive parenting" from the perspective of an economic sociologist. She illustrates how we can learn a lot about the social and cultural forces effecting American parents by "following the money". She puts into a broader perspective many of the concerns about "intensive parenting" that  Meredith Elkins, PhD discussed in an earlier podcast this year. Dr Bandelj sociological perspective will helps parents appreciate some of the cultural and social forces that are effecting their everyday parenting 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/overinvested