Consider these statistics: One in 18 children today are born to men over 50; there are 10.4 million single moms in the U.S. today (seven million more than in 1970); and approximately 150,000 fathers stay at home while the mother goes to work.

But according to Mark Penn and Kinney Zalesne, authors of the newly released book “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” the most dramatic change yet is the shift from parent to kid in the everyday power struggle at home. Today kids are calling the shots, not the parents.

Penn, who has been studying polling data for over 30 years, says it starts from the day the infant is brought home. Up until the 1950s, pediatricians advised parents to keep a strict sleep schedule, to make them “cry it out” in the middle of the night.

Parenting expert Dr. Spock was labeled “permissive” when he suggested that sometimes it is OK to go in and comfort the child. Today 66% of moms believe that parents should absolutely comfort wee ones if they cry during the night, while 30% insist that babies should cry it out so that they learn how to sleep on their own.

It is a cultural shift, a generational thing.

A few months ago I was visiting a friend of mine who is in his 70s. Four-year-old Katherine started to fuss.

“Don’t you dare give in to her,” he said to me. “If you do, she’ll be a monster of a teenager. You can’t raise kids with sympathy.”

He went on about how he raised 11 of his siblings and offered me the same advice older teachers give to newbies on their first day of school: “Don’t crack a smile until after Christmas.”

But that’s not me. Really not me. And in raising Katherine and David, I need to be me.

I see the cultural war surface in playgroups that I attend. The strict parents are counting “That’s 1,” and off giving their children a timeout for disruptive behavior.

Permissive types like me (and the 66% in Penn’s polls) are giving in to the requests and whines made by the little people.

Here’s where it gets complicated, according to Penn, for Gen-X moms like me who sleepwalk in the middle of the night to console their preschoolers: The job of fostering the uniqueness, individuality and self-expression of our youth comes at the price of exhaustion.

Is this a good thing?

The jury’s still out, say Penn and Zalesne. We simply don’t know yet if “all this child-centeredness and greater permissiveness will turn out stronger citizens, or just less obedient ones.”

In a strange way, I was relieved in reading their conclusion: “If you’re completely exhausted – or have the distinct sense that parenting today is harder than it used to be – the reign of the child is probably why.”

Therese J. Borchard’s column is syndicated by Catholic News Service. It runs bi-weekly in The Tablet.