Author Talk: Jennifer Wallace – Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It

Please join Wilton Library for an Author Talk by Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who will discuss her New York Times bestseller Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It – which features the Wilton community!

In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They pack their schedules with AP classes and resume-padding activities, while family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools. In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back.

Wallace draws on interviews with families, educators, and today’s leading child psychologists as well as an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents. Through this deep research, Wallace shows what kids need from the adults in the room is not more pressure, but to feel like they matter, and have intrinsic self-worth not contingent upon external achievements. Packed with memorable stories and offering a powerful toolkit for positive change, Never Enough offers an urgent, humane view of the crisis plaguing today’s teens and a practical framework for how to help.

Wallace is an award-winning journalist and social commentator covering parenting and lifestyle trends. She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.

Elm Street Books will be selling copies after the talk. A portion of the proceeds goes to Wilton Library.

The media sponsor of our author talks is GOOD Morning Wilton.

Co-sponsored by Wilton Library, Wilton Youth Council, and Thrive With A Guide.

Registration is required.  Register on the Wilton Library website.