We all say we want our kids to be happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense. We aren't equipped for the possibility that they might be worse. But I guess that would be asking too much. It must be an evolutionary stopgap - if we were all so specifically, vividly aware of what might go horribly wrong, we would none of us have children at all.

I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in your name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognisable as pleasure at all - and, more important, the pleasure that you will be privileged to bring him.

We all say we want our kids to happy, only happy, and healthy, but we don't want that. We want them to be like we are, or better than we are. We as humans are very unimaginative in that sense. We aren't equipped for the possibility that they might be worse.

..what is a child for? Is he to give me comfort? Is he for me to give comfort to? And if a child can o longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?

Without them, one’s status as an adult is never secure; a childless adult creates adulthood for himself , and as exhilarating as it often is, it is also a state of perpetual insecurity