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As a general rule, I think the kids (young people generally) are alright. They live in different circumstances than I did, but they’re responding more or less rationally to the world they inherited. They’re doing fine.

Even so, the kids are testing me.

I am a firm believer in reading. I may not read 100+ books a year for pleasure like my wife does, but I am constantly reading. I do it for a living. I do it for fun. I am usually pretty good at it. And I spend a lot of my time reading to my kids: our bedtime routine involves reading four books (which feels like a lot some nights). We also read during the day. I get into it, too. I do voices for different characters, I ask a lot of questions, I shoehorn my kids into the stories we read, I editorialize. It’s fun. They look forward to it: my son talks about the books he wants to read for bedtime all day long (which is usually a different slate than the ones he wants to read during the day). My daughter just jams books at me and grunts “DADDY READ ME THE BOOK.” It is a big part of our lives. I'm guessing my kids read 8-10 books on an average day that are mostly suitable for 4 and 2 year olds.

And so indications that Gen Zers are not reading to their kids because they think it is boring make me very sad about the inner worlds that are being lost. Have you seen some of the alternatives to reading lately? I have. Part of me dies whenever I watch or hear clips of Chicky, the most insipid bird ever animated (sorry, I hate it. It’s worse than Blippi. It is so, so very stupid, and my son loves it to shreds). His capacity to find colorful, loud, maximalist pastiche clips on YouTube makes me fear for his safety. It's a cultural hell.

The stats themselves are grotesque. One in five boys age 0 to 2 don't get read to at all. Only 41% of all parents report reading to their kids before the kids turn 5.

I am not blaming Gen Z, even though I kinda want to. I became a parent at 32 when my wife and I both had terminal degrees, no debt, a pretty solid relationship, and some family support. We have demanding jobs but adequate resources. And even then, navigating the demands of modern parenthood fucking sucks. There’s an expectation that at least one adult needs to pay 100% attention to the kids at all times; you can’t just push them out into the yard and look for them at dusk because the culture has decided that this is maybe even criminally negligent. So instead, it’s a grinding, constant interaction with someone you love but still sometimes, hopefully secretly, resent. Whatever social supports for parenting you might, tucked away in the corner of your little caveman brain, think you maybe should have, you probably don’t have. Young parents must have it even worse. I can see why dedicating an hour or more a day to an activity that you don’t already like is a bridge too far.

But goddamn. Please, if there is any possibility that you can do it, read to your kids all the time until they run off to start reading on their own, and even then kinda keep reading to them until they tell you that you’re embarrassing them.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/02/gen-z-parents-reading-kids