The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure is a 2018 book by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

[2] Continuing to discuss contemporary partisanship or the "rising political polarization and cross party animosity", they state that the left and right are "locked into a game of mutual provocation and reciprocal outrage".

[3] They suggest specific programs, such as LetGrow, Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids, teaching children mindfulness, and the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

In their conclusion, the authors write that there will be positive changes soon as universities "develop a different sort of academic culture—one that finds ways to make students from all identity groups feel welcome without using the divisive methods."

[7] The term was coined by Pamela Paresky[8] and promulgated by The Coddling of the American Mind,[9] which described its status as "a sacred value", meaning that it was not possible to make practical tradeoffs or compromises with other desirable things (e.g., for people to be made to feel uncomfortable in support of free speech or learning new ideas).

[4][12] It has been compared to scope creep and the overall expansion of the concept of safety in other areas, such as school programs to address severe bullying being slowly expanded to provide adult intervention for ordinary, one-time incidents.

[15] The desire to promote these feelings of safety resulted in universities promoting practices such as content warnings (e.g., telling students in advance that the homework contains disagreeable information about racism), safe spaces (e.g., a designated room where students who support trans rights can avoid those who disagree), and bias-response teams (e.g., university employees who can be called in case of non-criminal racist speech).

"[22] Writing for The New York Times, Thomas Chatterton Williams praised the book's explanations and analysis of recent college campus trends as "compelling".

He questioned the book's assertion that students today are "disempowered because they've been convinced they are fragile" but said that the authors' "insights on the dangers of creating habits of 'moral dependency' are timely and important.