"Being responsible for ourselves, knowing our own wants and meeting them, is
difficult enough -- so difficult that the notion of being responsible for anyone
else, knowing anyone else's innermost desires and slaking them, seems like a
superhuman feat. And yet the entire history of our species rests upon it -- the
scores of generations of parents who, despite the near-impossibility of getting
it right, have raised small defenseless creatures into a capable continuation of
the species. This recognition is precisely what made Donald Winnicott's notion
of good-enough parenting so revolutionary and so liberating, and what Florida
Scott Maxwell held in mind when she considered the most important thing to
remember about your mother. And yet to be a parent is to suffer the ceaseless
anxiety of getting it wrong. A touching antidote to that anxiety comes from Fred
Rogers..."
Maria Popova shares more.
