Hello, Cruel World!: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times

From the author of How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes comes a science-based, hopeful guide on how to raise children who will not just survive, but thrive in this challenging, terrifying world—and who could ultimately help save it.

In the blink of an eye, our kids will be adults facing countless serious threats—climate change, gun violence, political polarization, and disinformation, to name but a few. We’re not going to be able to solve all these intractable problems before our kids grow up—so how are we to prepare them for an impossibly complex and scary future?

Plagued by this question, award-winning science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer interviewed parenting experts and researchers across multiple fields—psychology, education, information literacy, technology, business, and even addiction. What she discovered: even in these uncertain times, we can still teach our kids how to take care of themselves, fight for what they believe in, and bridge divides in ways most adults aren’t equipped to do.

In Hello, Cruel World!, Moyer provides practical, comprehensive, science-backed tools to help our children handle the world they will inherit. Her strategies help children develop three core attributes—coping mechanisms, connection techniques, and cultivation practices—so that kids can learn to set boundaries, take responsibility for their actions, build healthy relationships in turbulent times, and much more. By being activists in our parenting, we can set our kids up to not just survive, but also build a better world for themselves and future generations.

Melinda Wenner Moyer is an award-winning contributing editor at Scientific American, a regular contributor to The New York Times, and a former faculty member at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her first book is How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes. She also writes the popular Substack newsletter Now What.