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Best-selling author Michael Lewis has taken the world into high finance in “Liar’s Poker.” Into Silicon Valley in “The New New Thing.” Into pro sports in “Moneyball” and “The Blind Side.”

Now Lewis is sharing his own ambivalent adventures in fatherhood. He’s a father of three, and still not sure he’s figured it out.

Once upon a time, he says, there were clear expectations of what fathers were and weren’t — what they did and didn’t do. Now, says Lewis, nobody knows. We’re all just making it up.

This hour, On Point: Michael Lewis on American fatherhood now

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Michael Lewis joins us from Seattle. He’s author of “Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood.”  (You can read an excerpt at NPR.org.) He’s currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair (where he recently wrote on Iceland’s financial collapse) and a columnist for Bloomberg News.

A six-year-old boy proudly displays a dollar that he earned by selling found golf balls back to golfers at the course near his family's home near Seattle, Wash., in July 2008. (AP)

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It’s been a long time since the language and reality of hard times rained down on Americans like they’re raining down now.

It’s tough enough for adults to hear and take. But what about the kids? In families where jobs are lost. In homes where family budgets have gotten thin. In a society where high hopes are under fire and headlines are scary?

How are young Americans taking this economic crisis onboard? What are they asking, and being told? And will it shape them like the Great Depression shaped their grandparents’ generation?

This hour, On Point: American kids in the economic crisis.

You can join the conversation. How are your kids taking the crisis onboard? What are the questions in your house over lost jobs, tight budgets? How are you dealing with your kids’ hopes and fears in tough times?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Portland, Oregon, is Sue Shellenbarger, “Work & Family” columnist and senior writer for The Wall Street Journal. She wrote recently about how recession can shape a child’s future.

From Great Falls, Virginia, we’re joined by Neil Howe. Co-author with William Strauss of numerous books, including “Generations,” “13th Gen,” “The Fourth Turning,” and “Millennials Rising,” he’s a historian, economist, and demographer who thinks about generational change in America and long-term fiscal policy.

And with us in our studio is Marjorie Mitlin, a licensed social worker in private practice and a school adjustment counselor in the Sharon Public School System in Sharon, Mass.

And during today’s broadcast we heard from kids across the country. We’d like to give a special thanks to Youth Radio for producing the audio in today’s show, and to Youth Mic in New York for collaborating.

Marian Robinson will move to the White House with the First Family. Photo: Tim Llewellyn (from Flickr)

When the Obama’s move into the White House tomorrow, the new president’s mother-in-law is moving in with them.

Marian Robinon, 71, mother of Michelle Obama, has already been taking a lot of care of her granddaughters, Sasha and Malia, while the Obama’s campaigned. Now, it’s official: the grandma, the mother-in-law, is to be in the house. Fulltime.

And it turns out, that is happening in more and more American homes. Grandparents helping parents raise kids – often under one roof. This hour, On Point: when the in-laws, the grandparents, move in.

You can join the conversation. Do your in-laws, or your parents live with you? Do you envy the Obamas having Grandma in the house to help out? Or not?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College, director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, author of “Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage.”

Joshua Coleman, clinical psychologist and expert on families, parenting, and relationships; author of “When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along.”

India is home to one of the world’s oldest societies, with thousands of years of religious and cultural traditions.

Journalist Anita Jain, born in India but raised in northern California, felt drawn back to her homeland to find a husband the old-fashioned way — by an arranged marriage.

At thirty-three, she was feeling pressure from her Indian family to marry. Her father placed ads in Indian papers and brokered online dates. Her mother cried. Fed up with the New York dating scene, Anita moved her search for a husband to Delhi.

What she found was not the India of her parents, or not exactly. Instead, she found a thriving Generation Y, partying in tight jeans and tank tops to Bhangra club beats, harvesting the fruits of the high-tech boom. A hybrid of old and new, where clubgoers encounter cows in the street.

This hour, On Point: Looking for love, marriage, and tradition, in modern India.

What do you know of that gear-grinding between generations? How do you reconcile the clash of the traditional and the new? Tell us your story. You can join the conversation right here on this page.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

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Guests:

Joining us from New York is Anita Jain. She’s a journalist born in New Delhi and raised in northern California. Her new book, out yesterday, is “Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India.” You can read an excerpt from the book.

And from Cambridge, England, we’re joined by Perveez Mody. She’s a lecturer in social anthropology at Cambridge University and author of “The Intimate State: Love-Marriage and the Law in Delhi.”

The Paskowitz family was maybe literally like no other.

Nine kids plus mom and dad living in a 24-foot camper. Never going to school. Raised on the beaches of California, Mexico, and Hawaii with surfing as their be all and end all, and the sea as their teacher.

If you’ve ever dreamed of taking your family, your life, way off the grid, here’s the ultimate example.

A new documentary, “Surfwise,” captures the thrill of escape and the deep ambivalence of grown children looking back on being raised, as one says, “like wolves.”

This hour, On Point: Off the grid, and “Surfwise.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Jonathan Paskowitz, the second of nine Paskowitz children and producer of “Surfwise.”

Moses Paskowitz, the fifth of nine children.

Doug Pray, director of “Surfwise.”

Daniel Mendelsohn’s grandfather told him stories, in his rich Yiddish accent, about all kinds of things — life in the old country, life in America, stories of rabbis and high holidays and Jewish tradition.

The one thing Mendelsohn’s grandfather never told stories about was his brother Shmiel, Shmiel’s wife and their four beautiful daughters, and how they all died in the Holocaust.

Now, the grandson has gone back to rescue that story — complex, tragic, surprising — from the thickening mists of time. To know the lost of his family before the people who knew them are all gone. It’s a compelling story.

Hear a conversation with Daniel Mendelsohn about one family in the Holocaust and his new book “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Daniel Mendelsohn, author of “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million” and Professor of Humanities at Bard College.

Froma Zeitlin, Professor of Classics and Comparitive Literature at Princeton Universty

Jack Green, used to date Ruchele, one of Shmiel’s daughters. Survived the Holocaust by hiding out in the mountains around Bolechow and has lived in Sydney, Australia for the last 55 years.