It was quite a picture — on the front of the New York Times magazine. There were the "Little Big People" as the cover article names them — "little big people" who are precocious, even out of control, with affluent parents who have only themselves to blame.

The picture shows a yuppie- dressed eight- or nine-year-old boy, stylish, cool with his own cellular phone in hand. In the center is a modishly over-dressed twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl, stylish, sexy, and eating high priced Chinese take-out food. On the right is a blasé, cool ten-year-old boy, attired in the latest pseudo-athletic styles, holding his tiny personal portable television beside his baseball cap. These are the children who have had it all, says Lucinda Franks in her cover article.

Herself a mother of a nine-year-old, …