The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don't pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order, or a consumer good.

I think very often when we think we are aiming at the best for our children, what we are really doing is trying to position them for competitive success in an intensely driven kind of society. I'm not sure that always leads to the good life or to happiness.

One can imagine a kind of hormonal arms race or genetic arms race, whether it's to do with height or IQ, conceivably, in the future. So it's limitless, and that's another of the features that sets it apart from medical intervention.

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong.

I have a broad but not an expert or scholarly background in the Jewish tradition. I've tried to learn what I can from childhood, but I am not an expert on Jewish teachings.

I think part of being a parent, to love one's child, is to accept them as they come - not to see them as instruments of our ambition or as creatures to be molded, as if they were themselves commodities.