A year later, that truck is gathering dust in the bottom of a closet and Bryn has openly expressed her desire to live in a pink castle. It all began when Dora the Explorer betrayed us.

I’d always been somewhat pleased that the cartoon character my daughter latched onto was the intelligent, intrepid Dora. For four seasons on Nickelodeon (and then its sister station Noggin, and then CBS), this school-age Latina role model eschewed nearly every girly-girl gender stereotype, the pink T-shirt that hangs loosely over her realistically rounded 8-year-old belly being the only token element of her nascent femininity. Dora’s brain is touted as her main asset (she’s bilingual; she solves jungle-based brainteasers), but she’s also ruggedly athletic (she’s the star of both her baseball and soccer teams; she never blinks before shimmying up a banyan tree or scaling a volcano). Dora’s esteem-building, multiculti adventures are the polar opposite of the glitter-spewing, cutesy-fests — think Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony — that women of my own generation grew up with.

Then last month came “Dora’s Fairytale Adventure,” a feature-length Nickelodeon special (now on DVD) in which our heroine visits Fairytale Land and goes on a quest to become a “True Princess.” By the end, her tomboy bob has been magically transformed into flowing Rapunzel-length locks and she’s suddenly clad in a shimmery, puffed-out yellow ball gown. Dora is showered with “oohs” and “ahhs” from her talking animal friends who proclaim things like, “Look at Dora’s shoes –they’re so sparkly!” Then she flies off on a unicorn with a rainbow-striped mane. Seriously. It was at this point in the program that my daughter — who I don’t believe had any prior concept of royalty — placed a pink shoe-box crown on her head and started twirling around, saying, “I’m a princess!”

The princess has been ubiquitous in pop culture in recent years. Not that she’d ever gone away. The archetype is one of the longest-lived in all of literary history, and a spate of films (“The Prince & Me,” “A Cinderella Story,” the entire Anne Hathaway oeuvre, coupled with some classic toys that have undergone heavily marketed princess makeovers, such as Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper, the Cabbage Patch Princess, the aforementioned Dora) have left young girls in a world where they can’t turn their heads without having to shield their eyes from the glare of a tiara.

Leading the charge in this princess revolution is Disney — no surprise, really, as this is the company that has had bustled skirts and puffy sleeves at the core of its business for well over half a century. The idea for a Disney Princess brand was born four years ago, when Disney Consumer Products president Andy Mooney went to see one of the company’s famous ice shows and spotted a number of young female audience members dressed like little doppelgängers of their favorite characters. The Princess brand, which groups together eight of the studio’s animated film heroines — Belle (“Beauty and the Beast”), Ariel (“The Little Mermaid”), Jasmine (“Aladdin”), Pocahontas, Mulan, Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty — into one big tea party posse, was an instant success. It started with some dress-up costumes sold at the Disney Store, and after those initial test products vanished from the shelves faster than Cinderella’s coach at midnight, Disney knew it had a major hit on its satin-gloved hands. Sales of the Princess line were an astounding $2.5 billion last year, up from $300 million in 2001.

“We’ve gone beyond the dress-up and toys, and begun to look at the brand as a lifestyle, filling out all the other things girls need in life,” says Mary Beech, director of franchise management for Disney Consumer Products. Indeed. In addition to the official Disney Princess merchandise for the home — beds, comforters, cereal, toothbrushes, dolls, castle tents, storybooks, TVs, DVD players — parents can throw their daughters an official Hallmark Disney Princess party complete with a cake that has a few regal beauties waltzing on top; they can take them for breakfast with the princesses at Disney World in Florida; And they can enroll them in a princess class at the recently opened World of Disney store in New York. There Cinderella’s beautiful friend, Lady Seraphina, will educate starry-eyed youngsters in the four Princess Principles — intelligence, grace, thoughtfulness and honesty — through lessons involving everything from “teamwork, table manners, and truthfulness to courtesy, compassion, curtseys and kindness.”

The ease and rapidity with which a princess obsession can take hold of a young girl’s psyche is mind-blowing. Josh Levine, a Brooklyn, N.Y., writer/photographer, says he and his wife made a decisive effort to keep their daughter, Sasha, away from anything Disney. But when she was a little over 2 she watched a video of “Sleeping Beauty” at a friend’s house and was immediately hooked. Soon the accoutrements of princess-hood started to fill the Levine home and Sasha began to insist upon wearing ball gowns as her everyday wardrobe. While decked out in her full Snow White regalia in early October, a woman on the street asked the 3-year-old if she was going to dress as a princess for Halloween, to which Sasha responded, “No, I am a princess.” “I became more and more conscious of the fact that she was always in character,” says Levine. “It’s like dating an actress.”

But he also realized that, as the parent of a princess, he was not alone. The widespread nature of the princess phenomenon made itself known to Levine one day at a local playground. “There was my daughter, traipsing through the park dressed like a princess, when I looked around and I started noticing others,” he explains. “I assumed their parents were undoubtedly tripping out like I was.” In an experimental attempt to bring these royal families together, Levine decided to throw a princess party — for anyone who wanted to come. He posted a sign announcing that the very next day would be the First Annual Prospect Park Princess Picnic. And with less than 24 hours’ notice, 25 little girls — each in full costume — showed up for a party. “People always talk about ‘the magic of Disney,’” Levine says. “Well, that’s the magic of Disney: It’s addictive. It’s like crack for 5-year-olds.”

So, why are young girls so enthralled by princesses? “Transformation is at the core of all the princess fairy tales,” says Maria Tatar, Harvard folklorist and editor of “The Annotated Brothers Grimm.” “Young women, often poor, sometimes even almost animal-like, end up with all the power in the end. Little kids, even very young ones, can understand who has the power, and that has always been part of the attraction.”

In a world where women struggle for power, isn’t anything that gives my daughter a sense of strength a good thing, even if it leaves a trail of glitter on the carpet? For Tatar, the answer is, “Not necessarily.” Disney, she believes, “capitalizes on the worst parts of the fairy tales.” By celebrating the ugly duckling scenario of overnight transformation, she says, most of Disney’s princess tales reinforce the idea of achieving power through fabulous clothing and great wealth. The problem as she sums it up: “They don’t work for it.”

As any parent who has sat through endless viewings of these various princesses’ films can tell you, there’s some truth to that. While Jasmine, Pocahontas and even Belle showed literal girl power by standing toe-to-toe with their cartoon foes, Sleeping Beauty is a victim, and as far as I can tell, Snow White’s greatest feat of courage was dusting. And the No. 1 seller in the Princess line — Cinderella — shows a rebellious spirit by disobeying her wicked stepfamily, but essentially gains all her power through the good will of a magical floating Angela Lansbury look-alike.

Disney Princess chief Mary Beech agrees completely with the transformation and power theories, insisting that there’s more to these heroines than “just the dress.” “Princesses can get their way: They can manage unruly boys, they can banish the family dog — and it makes girls feel good about themselves,” she says. “The princesses are good-hearted, happy, positive characters. But,” she concedes, “you do have to get used to a lot of pink.”

Pink I can deal with. (Bryn has been inexorably drawn to the color seemingly since birth.) I think my concern about my daughter’s first experimentations with crown-and-scepter culture had to do with the fact that it was a phase that seemed entirely focused on telling her how beautiful she is. Belle may be well-read and Mulan can ace archery, but they only find true happiness once they’re married off with royal expense accounts.

“Culturally, these stories impress upon girls the importance of beautiful dress and gorgeous good looks,” says Tatar. “But in many of the original versions of these classic fairy tales, the girls are feisty and cunning; they use their intelligence and work very hard to liberate themselves.” Just like Dora the Explorer.

Which suddenly got me thinking about Dora’s Fairytale Adventure again, the epic that was the catalyst for Bryn’s current princess obsession. While, yes, Dora winds up looking like someone who should be in the audience at a joust, waving a silky kerchief to cheer on her chosen knight, she actually does achieve that magical transformation through quick thinking and resourcefulness. To gain the mystical items that will eventually earn her a tall pointy hat, she braves a smoke-snorting dragon, tames a cranky giant and outwits a witch, among other daunting tasks.

So for a parent like myself, who can sometimes admittedly be overly sensitive, is it even worth fighting the Disney princess paradigm? Josh Levine says no. “Being a princess makes Sasha so incredibly happy,” he says. “At least it’s not Barney.”

As I pondered it all, staring into a Toys “R” Us catalog at the lavender-turreted Disney Princess kitchen that my daughter opted to put on her Christmas list in lieu of a much more pleasantly hued Little Tikes one, Bryn wandered into the room, looking absolutely adorable in her favorite oversize “gown” (a velvety red dress that belonged to my wife once upon a time) and “tiara” (part of my wife’s bridal headgear from our wedding). I was struck with a moment of not-so-regretful resignation: Maybe the princess phase is simply an inevitable part of raising a daughter and soon it will be my job to steer her out of it. That’s when Bryn removed her tiara, reached up and squeezed it, somewhat painfully, onto my head, and said, “You’re the princess, Daddy. I’m the queen. Dance with me.” I got up and twirled her around, of course.

“We’re always looking for chances to share our faith,” says Mark Brown, vice president of marketing for the country’s oldest tract publisher, the American Tract Society. “This is the only time of the year you can do this legally.” While it has been done for years among Evangelicals, the number of folks who answer the door with gospel tracts as well as M&Ms and bite-size Milky Ways seems to be steadily increasing.

“Our tract sales have grown by leaps and bounds,” Brown says, noting that ATS sold 3.5 million tracts this year, a 10 percent increase since last Halloween. “For a long time, Christians have tried to ignore the holiday or go to an alternative event, like a carnival. Now we’ll see them passing out tracts at the carnival or sitting on their porch with the light on and a stack of tracts. They’re choosing to be visible. And the beauty of Halloween being on a weekend this year — more people are home, so there’ll be way more participation.”

The tracts themselves are designed to speak directly to kids, filled with brightly colored cartoon illustrations and written with the lively colloquial tone of a Saturday morning PSA. (“Costumes are cool, but Heaven is awesome!” reads one ATS tract. Another, which calls Jesus “the ultimate superhero,” tells kids to “Look at His birthday on the calendar. It’s Christmas!”) Good News makes ample use of puzzles and word games (“If there are activities, kids are much more engaged,” Dennis says). And ATS has its finger on the pulse of kid culture, featuring popular characters like Spider-Man and Harry Potter on its tracts. (The “Finding Nemo” tract retells the story of the hit Disney film through a Christian lens: “God loves you just as Marlin loved Nemo [but] Nemo’s sin separated him from his father.”) The biggest and most recent innovation has been the direct packaging of tracts with candy, stickers or sometimes small toys, à la Happy Meals.

Publishers agree that retaining the treat is important to the tract’s acceptance by children. “Kids are out there looking for candy,” Brown explains. “If you hand them a tract and nothing else, they’ll have a negative feeling toward you and toward the tract. So you want to give a really good piece of candy; don’t gyp the kid out. Then when they dump the bag, their eyes just pop out, and they associate this with the candy.”

Both companies tout the success of their approach, claiming thousands of positive responses each year by phone, letter and e-mail. And both are careful about encouraging a responsible use of their tracts. ATS even posts lists of dos and don’ts on its Web site, including tips like “Don’t force tracts on people,” and “[Do not use one] if the tract could be interpreted as a personal attack” or “when it may needlessly offend someone.” Still, the pairing of the word of God and the word of Hershey does not sit well with everyone. The Rev. Astrid Storm, an Episcopal priest at Grace Church in New York, who calls the practice “back-door evangelism” says, “I loathe making a connection between Christianity and getting goodies. It’s not the best connection to make at the outset of one’s faith, since it hardly equips one to deal with the many disappointments and setbacks that are an inevitable — and important — part of the Christian life.”

For the Rev. Winnie Varghese, a chaplain at Columbia University, it’s the bigger picture that matters. “If it’s OK for Muslim families to put tracts proclaiming the tenets of Islam into trick-or-treat bags or for more liberal denominations to pass out literature saying that you can be gay and still be a good Christian, then [the Evangelical Halloween tracts] are fine, too,” she says, “but I suspect it wouldn’t be OK in those cases. We always give a certain amount of space to Evangelicals that we don’t give to other denominations.”

“Still,” Varghese adds, “we understand the Evangelical impulse that they must lead as many people as possible to Christ. In that belief, they are ethically bound to do so.”

And that sums up the mission of the tract publishers exactly. “Halloween is typically affiliated with ghouls and demons and witches, kind of the dark side,” Dennis says. “And Christians are commanded to be light in darkness.”

Dennis, whose grandparents founded Good News in 1938 with the belief that “the Gospel message deserves an excellent package,” distributes tracts from his own home in Wheaton, Ill., on Halloween and admits that he has occasionally been met with a less-than-positive response. “On occasion, there’s somebody who’ll get upset that we’re propagating the Bible’s message to people who may not want their kids to hear it,” he says. “And, you know, the great thing is, we live in a country that allows for that freedom.” (Though neither the American Civil Liberties Union nor Americans United for the Separation of Church and State gave official comment on the topic, both organizations responded to Salon’s inquiry by acknowledging the legal right of people to hand out religious literature from their own homes.) “In addition,” Dennis adds, “we’d encourage parents to look through the contents of any child’s candy bag and remove anything they don’t want.”

Dennis also points out that writing and designing a truly successful tract means maintaining a difficult balance between the Christian message and Halloween imagery that is often in opposition to church teachings. “We have to keep two audiences in mind,” he says. “Our goal is to provide a tract that is palatable to both the Christians who buy them and the end user it is intended for. A tract that has a ghoul on the cover might really speak to a kid who’s been dabbling in those kinds of things, but we may not be able to sell that to the Christians. We stay away from the occult stuff and tend to use more innocuous costumes, like pirates.”

Another publisher, perhaps the most controversial producer of gospel tracts, is not as concerned with making such distinctions. Chick Publications, founded in the 1960s by Christian cartoonist Jack Chick, does not shy away from horror imagery in the slightest, instead churning out hundreds of comic strips replete with good old fire-and-brimstone evangelism. One tract, “Devil’s Night,” in which a young girl’s teacher berates her for not wearing a monster costume to school on Halloween, illustrates the pagan origins of the holiday with images of the Celtic lord of the dead calling souls to him. Another — titled “Boo!” — features a chainsaw-wielding Satan chasing campers through a forest and again tells the origins of Halloween, this time with an image of hooded Druids about to sacrifice a kidnapped virgin.

“Some of our tracts may be more in your face than others,” says Chick representative Karen Rockney, “but that’s why we have a large variety of tracts. All tracts are not for everybody. And we get plenty of letters from people who say, ‘I never would have been saved, never gotten the message’ if we hadn’t been in your face.”

Groups like ATS are quick to point out the less-graphic nature of their own tracts. “Nobody likes to be told they’re going to hell in a handbasket,” says ATS’s Brown. “They appreciate images they can relate to, that can express the simple message of the Gospel.”

“We want to be careful not to use scare tactics, not to use fear as a motivator, to focus on a very positive message,” says Dennis of Good News. “Having said that, God can use anything to draw people to Himself.”

Halloween is an evolving holiday, and it’s being pulled in two directions. Some people are flocking to their houses of worship to enjoy extravagant Bible-friendly festivals complete with games, prizes and rides. Some are still embracing the classic fright-fest, decked out with buckets of sweets, orange lights and animatronic Frankensteins. Both groups have contributed to the $3.12 billion that will make this coming Sunday the most lucrative Halloween ever for the holiday merchandise industry. “Yes, Halloween is changing,” says ATS’s Brown, “but we don’t want it to change too much. Then we won’t have people coming to the door anymore.”

Which brings us to a third, distinctly different point of view on the holiday. Daisy Casillas, a 30-year-old Web designer in Jacksonville, Fla., spent past Halloweens waiting for trick-or-treaters with candy and Chick tracts at the ready, something she’s decided to forgo this year. “I’ve decided not to even buy Halloween candy, because it gives manufacturers the message with my dollars that I celebrate it; and I don’t. I just won’t answer the door. Imagine if every so-called professing Christian in America did not answer the door. There would be no Halloween if it didn’t make money.”

Although it would probably have been more pleasing to the adult eye, I can’t imagine the younger me would have had the same fondness for a reversible embroidered silk Pottery Barn Kids quilt with matching sham. I try to keep this in mind now, when purchasing décor for my daughter’s room. It’s difficult, though; I know a Dora the Explorer light fixture would elicit endless squeals of delight, but would it go with the Picasso print hanging over her crib?

The bedrooms of today’s preschoolers have a decidedly different aesthetic than those of my Mattel-driven youth. Gone are the Willy Wonka-inspired candy murals, the Smurf-shaped beanbag chairs, the My Little Pony window treatments. In their stead we see braided chenille rugs, hand-painted boutique lampshades, and four-poster beds draped with mosquito netting. What happened to those hideous “Hey! I’m sleeping in a Ferrari!” racecar beds that sat in the rooms of every sitcom preteen between 1978 and 1985? Either children have far more sophisticated tastes than they did a few decades ago, or today’s parents, when they buy for their kids, are really buying for themselves.

Perhaps the answer lies more in marketing than pure selfishness. Sure, the current crop of new parents is a product of the “Me Decade,” but there’s more to it than that. Mine was the first generation of kids to have TV shows based on toys, instead of the other way around. And we were among the first guinea pigs to experience children’s advertising after the National Association of Broadcasters deregulated it in 1982. Now that we have purchasing power for our own children, a whole new army of adult brands is seeking to lay psychic claim to the cash we’ve earmarked for our offspring. That’s why we’re spending $70 on white cashmere Baby Gap sweaters for children we know will inevitably puke on them.

Grown-up stores marketing children’s items add to the misconception that kids are just like adults, only smaller. And the unfortunate side effect of that theory seems to be the burgeoning concept of parenting by art direction: The belief that one can mold his or her child’s personality by purchasing the appropriate accoutrements. (“But, sir, my daughter couldn’t possibly have been the one who started the fight; everything in her room belongs to the same Victorian teddy bear theme.”) We follow this line of thought in part because we are easily duped by catalog-induced fantasies.

Flipping through the Pottery Barn Kids 2003 Christmas catalog, one is amazed by the apparent fact that most grade-schoolers are not only very tidy, but organized to the point of OCD. Checked-off to-do lists serve as centerpieces for several rooms, and every vintage toy and logo-less crayon is stowed away in its appropriately labeled wicker basket. Children are also seemingly much more well-behaved than films like “Mr. Mom,” or “Daddy Day Care,” or, say, most people’s home movies, would have us believe. Children study diligently at their antiqued white desks, they cut out paper dolls, they brush their teeth, they use flash cards, and on Christmas, they sit in their individual monogrammed armchairs and stare at the tree. (In keeping with the season, the current catalog also offers monogrammed stocking, monogrammed ornaments, monogrammed wooden sleds, monogrammed turkey aprons, and, of course, monogrammed Santa hats.) The pages of this catalog feature no fewer than 26 children who are either reading, writing or engaged in some kind of non-messy craft project. You can almost sense an eerie silence in the photos, as if the only thing a foley artist would need to do to score this catalog would be to leave his microphone in an empty cathedral.

We can only jump to one conclusion: Stylish, trendy, modern but old-looking furniture creates perfect children. But take a closer look and you may start to question for whom these rooms are actually designed. How many 7-year-old boys do you know who are obsessed with 1940s-era floppy leather football helmets? Yet we see an entire room devoted to that very motif. In fact, a common trend among Pottery Barn Kids is a fondness for things that were popular 40 years before they were born. As evidence, I present the brothers who own several jars of marbles, the boy with the Adam West-era Batman comic, and the young man whose favorite movie, based on the poster hanging over his bed, is the 1965 Dale Robertson western “The Man from Button Willow.”

It’s a common belief that the way we decorate our homes is an expression of who we really are. And we’ve now begun twisting that concept in terms of our children, believing that the way we decorate their rooms is an expression of who they will be. Pottery Barn offers hope of orderly, intellectual, very urbane children, the kind that most orderly, intellectual, urbane adults want. They’re the kids who will grow up to attend the subdued yet jazzy cocktail parties that are the intended destination of everything the adult version of Pottery Barn sells.

The Ikea catalog, in contrast, promises a completely different kind of child. The Swedish manufacturer’s lower price points naturally lend themselves to a more bohemian philosophy from that of Pottery Barn. Ikea kids don’t just sit quietly and do their homework, they boldly climb all over the furniture; they hang from the ceilings; they devour ice cream cones and let the melting soft-serve drip all over their faces, because they know how to enjoy life, dammit! On the pages of this catalog you will find children who are creative, free-thinking, and liberally inclusive — each Ikea household appears to be overrun by a multi-ethnic brood of dreamers.

The 2004 catalog, narrated from the kids’ point of view, labels its rooms with sobriquets like “City in the Clouds” and “The Good Smell Factory.” It encourages wild and wacky creativity, like donning flippers in the bathtub or wearing a tiara while watching your flat screen TV. It celebrates the curious nature of kids who snoop through their parents’ drawers, like the little girl on Page 13, who says, “The City in the Clouds has lots of hidden treasures. Including some things your parents thought you didn’t know about.” Ikea kids don’t let anything hold them back, not even an inability to pronounce umlauts. They want their toys stored in suspended overhead nets; they want shredded shower curtains; they want to have their courage challenged nightly by a stuffed bee the size of a Macy’s float hovering in the corner of their room. The parent who chooses Ikea is proudly shouting to the world, “It’s OK if my child becomes a starving artist! And I’m going to show him that by making sure no two objects in his room are the same color!”

An Ikea child would feel stifled and confused in the home of a Pottery Barn kid. Except for the wicker baskets. They both have wicker baskets.

So the question is, which kind of kid do you want: Pottery Barn or Ikea? Or Bloomingdale’s? Or Target? My apartment is currently half-Pottery Barn, half-Ikea, so you can imagine the state of confusion I’m in. There’s suddenly a brand new worry for parents: anxiety over buying for the right subculture. Thankfully, we can all look back upon our own youths to find an easy solution to this dilemma — just buy whatever your friends buy. But this strategy leads to peer pressure. Parents can be made to feel horribly inadequate when they take their preschooler to a friend’s house for a lunchtime play date and watch the other child climb into his hand-crafted Italian booster seat, or upon realizing that the Crate & Barrel entertainment unit in their friends’ family room is stocked with the entire line of Baby Einstein videos while they know their own daughter is back home engrossed in her 17th viewing of “Lilo & Stitch.”

A curious segregation sprouts up between parents who opt for different accessory styles, and it can be just as dramatic as the rift between the cry-it-out crowd and the attachment parents. Roll a hulking Graco stroller down the streets of Manhattan and you’ll be greeted with xenophobic stares from all the Maclaren pushers. But this is not just urban elitism; it goes both ways. Take one of those lightweight Maclarens with you while visiting relatives out in SUV country and you’ll have incredulous neighbors asking you where the baby’s cupholder and clip-on toy rack are.

Still, all of these well-thought-out purchasing decisions are just wishful thinking on our parts. It’s not abnormal for parents to want their kids to be like them. But what seems oddly pathological about the current obsession with childhood accoutrements is that we apparently want our children to be like our current selves, not like we were when we were their age. How else can we explain toddler products being retailed by Starbucks? (Yes, the ubiquitous coffee house chain once offered the short-lived “Bearista” sippy cup which was eventually recalled after being deemed a choking hazard.) We need to come to grips with the fact that they’re simply going to be who they’re going to be, despite our best attempts to pigeonhole them while they’re young. There’s a part of me that knows that no matter how many Shakespearean pop-up books I ply her with, my daughter will still end up captain of her high school’s co-ed lacrosse team.

I honestly don’t know if my parents had any kind of future vision for me when I was growing up. I’d like to imagine that, with some kind of pop culture foresight, they knew that I’d be able to pull that Star Wars blanket out of retirement when I was in college and score major kitsch value points with my dorm mates. But they probably just got it for me because I liked it. The one thing I know for sure is that the only marketing and peer pressure that contributed to the purchase of that particular movie tie-in was directed solely at me, the child.

A few weeks ago, the respected Journal of Marriage and Family published a study by Straus and his colleague Carolyn Field that reports that “psychological aggression” toward children is “so prevalent as to be just about universal.” This is the result of a telephone survey of 991 parents, 98 percent of whom admitted to using “psychological aggression” against their child by age 7. While the researchers’ definition of “psychological aggression” includes such inarguably objectionable acts as calling your children obscene names and threatening to throw them out of the house, it also includes actions that most parents regard as a normal part of raising kids — shouting and yelling. In fact, the 2 percent who came off completely clean in the study probably either lied or have nannies who do the hollering for them.

The tone of Straus and Field’s report is unrelenting. They do not distinguish between different forms of communication — harmful invective like “I wish you had never been born!” as opposed to “Do your homework now!” pleas. In their view, it also doesn’t seem to make a difference if parents scream at their children constantly, or just get loud once in a while. They say, “We believe it should be never.” While admitting that even the best of parents can sometimes lose their temper and get a bit snappish, they are sure to add, “This provides an explanation for some psychological aggression, not a justification.”

Upon first reading the study, I was incredulous; could the authors truly believe that occasional yelling would damage my child? I contacted Straus in Belgium, where he is currently teaching, in hopes of getting some clarification. “Any yelling or screaming is bad parenting,” he said, quite clearly. “It is not, in my opinion, a humane mode of family relationship.” So now not only was I “psychologically aggressive” toward my daughter, but I was also “inhumane” — a term I’d always associated with POW camps and cockfights.

I kept searching for some kind of caveat to Straus’ all-out ban on shouting but never found one. Not even motivation seems to matter. Couldn’t you get a free pass for yelling at your children out of frustration or concern as opposed to assaulting them with a malicious verbal attack that is intended to berate and belittle? “Because it is the lesser of two evils,” Straus told me, “does not make it not an evil.”

And yet, resolute as he is in his thesis, he admits there is still research to be done. “There is no empirical evidence,” he told me, “to support either my hypothesis or the view of critics.” But we’re still supposed to feel guilty about it.

In the study itself, the researchers admit their reluctance to label psychological aggression as “abuse” — mostly because there are legal definitions of abuse that some psychological aggression would not fit into — but Straus didn’t shy away from that word in the accompanying press release or in his interview with me. He also told me he “would not see any downsides” to future laws against psychological aggression. Such forms of discipline are tolerated right now, he says, because they are society’s norm (and certainly anything done by 98 percent of the population qualifies as a “norm”). “The expansion of humanitarian rights that has occurred in respect to other areas of childhood, such as child labor,” he said, “suggests that it is possible that the norms will change.”

And there you have it. Shouting “How many times have we told you to stop eating Mommy’s lipstick?” is on a par with manacling your kindergartner to a rusty antique Singer in the basement of a factory and forcing her to stitch up knockoff D&G handbags for 18 hours a day.

While Straus and Field certainly didn’t create the blame-the-parents-first atmosphere that has begun to blanket our country, with this study they’ve supplied a diaper’s load of fodder for all those people suffering from concerned-neighbor syndrome, the ones who seem to believe that the nation’s children should be raised by an army of omnipotent Stepford parents, and who are ready to call in a SWAT team if they spot a mother who hasn’t wiped her son’s runny nose quickly enough.

There’s not much a parent can do these days that doesn’t bring on an onslaught of societal guilt. Letting kids cry is neglectful, letting them glimpse even a nanosecond of television is irresponsible, and putting them in day care is so awful the Brothers Grimm wouldn’t use it as a plot device. You would think there’s enough genuine abuse in the world that we could cut some slack to a father who accidentally lets his vocabulary lapse into PG-13 as the stroller rolls over his toe, but apparently not.

I can’t count the number of times my wife was reprimanded, while our daughter was still in utero, for not exhibiting the mental tranquility of a Zen monk. “Stress can do horrible things to your baby,” was the constant refrain — one backed up by hordes of obstetricians across the nation. That, of course, only led her to become stressed out about becoming stressed out. When caring, responsible, attentive mothers can be made to feel like lousy parents before their children are even born, things have gone too far. It’s as if the best caregivers would have to be unfeeling, unemotional automatons. Mr. Spock has replaced Dr. Spock, and an impossible standard is being set.

Raising a child is pressure enough without having to suddenly worry about your decibel level as your 2-year-old decides that the keyboard of your iMac might like a drink of milk. You don’t need to curse at her, or berate her, or threaten to kick her out of the house (which would be a pretty nasty thing to do to a toddler). You may even admire her compassion with regard to your computer’s thirst. But you also might shout at her — intentionally or not — to get her attention, to make sure she stops, and to underscore the message that mixing dairy products and expensive technology is a no-no. And even if the tone of your voice temporarily upsets her, chances are she’ll get over it rather quickly. You don’t need to start worrying that you’ve just crossed the line into Joan Crawford territory. And if anyone tells you that you should, well, I think that’s psychological aggression.

Incidentally, after I yelled at my daughter that first time, she flashed me a big smile and giggled as if I had just put on an Elmo costume and done a headstand. Then she handed me back the Legos.