What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.

We pass our values, ideas and moral character on to our children, but we do that knowing that our children are going to revise our knowledge and reshape their values. There's something very paradoxical and profound about being a parent as opposed to parenting. We put in all this effort and energy not so that we can shape a child of a particular sort, but so that all sorts of possibilities can happen in the future.

Caring for children has always been one of the deepest and most satisfying things that a human being does, and yet it is hard to keep a healthy attitude toward it in our competitive, outcome-oriented society.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

Caring, whether for children or the dying, shouldn't be instrumental. It should be an intrinsic, moral good.

Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!

Instead of just saying, "I love my baby and I pick him up because he's adorable and it's so nice to cuddle with him," we practice attachment parenting. We let our children play outside and have age-appropriate freedoms and are labeled free-range parents.