It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the read more

It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do --or don't do.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snow-blower, read more

It is amazing how quickly the kids learn to drive a car, yet are unable to understand the lawnmower, snow-blower, or vacuum cleaner.

A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to read more

A society in which adults are estranged from the world of children, and often from their own childhood, tends to hear children's speech only as a foreign language, or as a lie. Children have been treated. as congenital fibbers, fakers and fantasisers.

I'm old enough to know better, but still too young to care.

I'm old enough to know better, but still too young to care.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after read more

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation. -Pearl S. Buck.

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours read more

It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.