Once considered the province of mother wit and custom, child rearing at the turn of the 20th century assumed the sober mantle of science. Since then, successive generations of mostly male experts have taken turns lecturing parents, often with conflicting advice, on how best to raise their children. But what, if anything, has really changed in the patterns of "scientific" advice-giving since the earliest years of the enterprise? What has been discovered, and what has been ignored? And how much should we trust the experts’ underlying confidence in the power of parents to shape their offspring? Our authors consider these and other aspects of a peculiarly American obsession.