Long hours of my early childhood were spent in our family car, accompanying my stay-at-home mother on errands their work the grocery store, the post office, the dry cleaners and the bank. Sometimes I was dragged along inside, but often, I stayed in the back seat with my colouring books to entertain myself while my mom quickly mailed a letter or picked up a loaf of bread unencumbered by a preschooler. To modern parents, this might sound delinquent, but at the time it was unremarkable. Most of my demographic cohort ? Generation X, born roughly between 1965 and 1984 ? were raised with this kind of benign neglect. We watched Sesame Street through the bars of our playpens, inhaled second-hand smoke in restaurants, rode in cars without seatbelts and were regularly exiled outside to play ?until the streetlights came on.? I doubt leaving me in the car ever troubled my mom. She was one of six children, born at the tail-end of the Great Depression to very newly arrived immigrant parents who rrkrked on a farm. Her childhood was hardscrabble; by comparison, mine was positively cushy. Besides, parents in that era didn?t think of child rearing as a calling, but rather as another domestic responsibility. According to a 2016 study that spanned several decades and looked at data from 11 Western countries (including Canada), mothers spent 54 minutes a day on childcare-related activities in 1965 (dads averaged 16). That was just enough time to change diapers, provide meals, bathe and maybe...