If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the kind of adult you wanted. There's almost this kind of competitive enterprise. That picture is the picture I think people often imply when they use the word "parenting".

We don't measure the quality of our other relationships by how well the other person turns out, for instance whether my husband is a better person after 10 years than he was when I first met him.

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

We're in a culture where everything is either consumption or production, so child care is either a very, very bad-paying form of work or a very expensive luxury that you purchase. There isn't a good place in our picture of the world for what caregiving is about. Even teenage babysitters have sort of disappeared from the scene.

What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

On the Web we all become small-town visitors lost in the big city.