siduri:

Parents come up against the limits of their power very, very early on, and modern parenting books are actually very forthright about it.

I stand corrected, if that's the case. I'm glad if things have changed so much for the better then. (My other point from that paragraph still stands, though.)

This just seems unnecessarily coy. My guess is that you're talking about HBD, but I think you should either make your case or not bring it up at all.

No, that's not what I had in mind. (And how on Earth did you get from the topic of self-help to that? Does my writing really evoke such strong stereotypical associations with those dark corners of the web?)

I wanted to make it clear that I do have more examples in mind (rather than generalizing from one example), but the trouble is that it's hard to state them briefly and bluntly in a way that's likely to be taken seriously and without offense on anyone's part.