NAM NGUYEN · AUTHOR OF KIN

We don’t build the future.

We raise it.

KIN explores how childhood and parenting have shaped civilization—and what the way we raise the next generation means for the future.

Childhood, Parenting, and the Making of Civilization

Coming September 1, 2026

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Cover of the book titled "KINK: Childhood, Parenting, and the Making of Civilization" by Nam Nguyen. The book cover features a silhouette of a person and a large green word "KINK". Two pages of the book are partially visible in the background with chapter titles and text.

For most of history, we have treated childhood as a private matter.
But childhood has always been a public force.

“Thoughtful and unapologetically grand”

— BOOKLIFE REVIEWS EDITOR’S PICK

Praise for KIN

“A wide-ranging and thought-provoking study”

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

“a solid balance between accessibility and academic rigor.”

— BLUEINK REVIEW

Nam Nguyen with black hair, glasses with blue frames, wearing a blue blazer and white shirt, sitting in a room with a wooden bookshelf and a lamp in the background.

Nam Nguyen

Ideas about how we raise people—and the societies they create.

Nam Nguyen is an author and strategist writing at the intersection of childhood, human development, institutions, and civilization. His background spans psychology, neuroscience, business strategy, and governance.

Author · Strategist · Board Director

More about Nam

Selected Essays

Featured
The First Generation Raised With AI Is Already Here
Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, education, Technology and Society
The First Generation Raised With AI Is Already Here
Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, education, Technology and Society

The first generation raised with artificial intelligence isn’t coming. It is already here. The real question is no longer whether children will use AI, but what happens when a technology capable of explaining, advising, creating, and even comforting becomes part of the environment in which they learn to think.

Read more →
Artificial Intelligence, Parenting, education, Technology and Society
Essays
We Made Childhood Safer. Did We Also Make It Smaller?
raising children, Parenting, Child Development, Non featured
We Made Childhood Safer. Did We Also Make It Smaller?
raising children, Parenting, Child Development, Non featured

We’ve made childhood safer, more organized, and more supervised. But in removing so much uncertainty from children’s lives, we may also be removing some of the small experiences that teach independence, judgment, and confidence.

Read more →
raising children, Parenting, Child Development, Non featured
The Wrong Question About AI in Schools
Artificial Intelligence, education, Non featured
The Wrong Question About AI in Schools
Artificial Intelligence, education, Non featured

The real question about AI in schools isn’t whether students should use it. It’s which parts of thinking we still want them to do for themselves. As AI makes polished answers cheap and immediate, education may need to focus less on producing work—and more on building judgment.

Read more →
Artificial Intelligence, education, Non featured
We Keep Asking Why People Aren’t Having Children
fertility, parenthood, demography, Non featured
We Keep Asking Why People Aren’t Having Children
fertility, parenthood, demography, Non featured

We keep asking why people aren’t having children. But perhaps the more revealing question is what kind of society makes parenthood feel possible. Falling fertility may be less about people rejecting family life than about the growing gap between the families people want and the lives they feel able to build.

Read more →
fertility, parenthood, demography, Non featured

Civilization is not inherited. It is raised.

KIN: Childhood, Parenting, and the Making of Civilization

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Ideas worth carrying forward.

One thoughtful essay each month about childhood, technology, institutions, and the forces shaping the next generation.

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