Pied Pipers & All That Jazz

Permissive Parenting & Childhood Confusion

Stand-up comic Sebastian Maniscalco recently hit the nail on the head in his 2022 Netflix special, Is It Me?,when he illustrated what’s wrong with American parenting.

One of his son’s classmates “identifies as a lion,” the comic wryly stated. The leonine child insists on roaming the back of the classroom, roaring and grooming himself, and distracting the younger Maniscalco from learning to read. This, the comic continued, isn’t the lion-child’s fault. The problem is the “stupid parents.” If his own kid were to come down the stairs dressed as a panda for school, Maniscalco said, he would tell him to “get the [bleep] back upstairs and get dressed.” Instead, this...