Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality

(Princeton Press, August 2025)

Kindergarten Panic under contract with Princeton Press examines the complex lives of families contending with the rise of school choice systems. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 102 parents of elementary children and observations of enrollment events in New York City, Kindergarten Panic identifies how school decision-making under contemporary school choice programs has fundamentally altered early parenthood. I argue that school enrollment during the early years shapes parents’ sense of self and their ideas about ‘good parenting.’ I conceptualize school decision-making as a rising form of family labor and demonstrate how school choice policy remains an enduring source of social inequality. Mothers and fathers and families across socioeconomic background experience school decision-making unequally. Kindergarten Panic sheds light on the new and unintended challenges parents face in an era of school choice.