“I’ll try, but it isn’t easy,” he said in a tone that was almost conversational. “You see, regardless of what I said when I was ranting at you about how much of a problem Markie was going to be, it’s been a long time since I was a parent. I’ve been sitting here, trying to remember what it was like. What’s so surprising to me is the realization that I’ve never really stopped. Nobody does.”
I started to shift uncomfortably.
“Hear me out. For once I’m trying to share some of my hard-won lessons with you without shouting. Forget the theories of parenthood! What it’s really all about is taking pride in things you can never be sure you had a hand in, and accepting the responsibility and guilt for things you either didn’t know or had no control over. Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the bare bones of the matter.”
“You don’t make it sound particularly attractive,” I observed.
“In a lot of ways, it isn’t. Your kid expects you to know everything … to be able to answer any question he asks and, more important, to provide a logical explanation of what is essentially an illogical world. Society, on the other hand, expects you to train your kid in everything necessary for them to become a successful, responsible member of the community . . . even if you aren’t yourself. The problem is that you aren’t the only source of input for the kid. Friends, schools, and other adults are all supplying other opinions, many of which you don’t agree with. That means that if your kid succeeds, you don’t really know if it was because of or in spite of your influence. On the other hand, if the kid goes bad, you always wonder if there was something else you could have said or done or done differently that could have salvaged things before they hit the wall.”