Kim Brooks quotes

At times, our collective anger seems a worthwhile thing - it has a weight and shape and force we couldn't achieve as individuals - but at other times, I can't help wondering how much it really accomplishes, if in some ways it might even impede us in our attempts to be more thoughtful, 'enlightened' human beings.

I don't want to believe it - that parenting itself makes art hard, that you must always sacrifice one for the other, that there is something inherently selfish and greedy and darkly obsessive in the desire to care as much about the thing you are writing or making as you do about the other humans in your life. What parent would want to believe this?

When I first learned I was pregnant with my son, I had only two firm convictions about parenting: I knew it was important, and I knew that I wanted to get it right. I was 29 at the time.

The desire to keep television out of our son's life was one of the few parenting priorities my husband and I agreed on from the beginning. We debated the pros and cons of co-sleeping, of pacifiers, of chemical-free crib mattresses and baby sign language. The television question, on the other hand, was a no-brainer.

In a country that provides no subsidized child care and no mandatory family leave, no assurance of flexibility in the workplace for parents, no universal preschool and minimal safety nets for vulnerable families, making it a crime to offer children independence in effect makes it a crime to be poor.

I think part of the way in which kids develop emotional and psychological resiliency is by having some independence.