Aug 3, 2023-- "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. (4346 reads)