Teens and Hugging

I can’t imagine what the gatekeepers of our parents’ generation—the ones who blackballed dancing because of all that close physical contact—would have thought about “the hug.” As this New York Times story describes, students hug all. the. time. No excuse is too small for another embrace. It’s a custom custom-built to alienate baffled parents.

As Beth J. Harpaz, a parenting columnist for The Associated Press and author of the book