The other effect that I worry about is the effect on the parent, that the moral teaching of humility and of the limits to our control that parenthood teaches- - that that will be lost and that we will begin to think of children more as consumer goods than as gifts that we can't fully control and for which we aren't fully responsible.
You can't do things unexpected in life if you're not willing to take a risk, and it's easier to risk your own life than it is for your parent to watch you take risks. It's very, very hard for parents to see children doing things that aren't a solid path. I've been through that.
When I first had a child, I really had a hard time trying to figure out how it was all going to fit together. Because I felt like, when I was with him, I wanted to be writing and I should be writing. And when I was writing, I felt like I should be with him, and wanted to be with him. So I was unhappy a lot.
I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.
I have a 20-year-old son, I have a 12-year-old son and I'm so afraid for them.
I think that being a parent has expanded my writing, expanded my understanding of my characters, and has added a depth and richness to my work. Having kids deepened my idea of parenting and all the anxieties that come along with it.
When my daughter Ektaa was born, she was weak and underweight and I was worried. I prayed to god to bless her with good health and he answered my prayers.
'The Road' is about that fear that all parents can have. What's going to happen to your child if you're not around? It takes those concerns to an extreme. In the film, without me the boy has no food, no shelter, no resources at all.
Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.
If I feel my child is being deprived of anything that could affect her progress as a person, then I become extremely neurotic and douse the situation with as much help as humanly possible.
I think that people are so insecure in their jobs, they're so uncertain that the people they work for really care about them, they're so uncertain about what their kids are looking at in the future, that people are reluctant to take any risks for change.
Families with disabled children are praying for their kids to die before them because they have no support systems. They are very scared about who will take care of their kids and how their kids will have a dignified life after they die.
Unlike Western parents, reminding my child of Lord Voldemort didn't bother me.
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
I don't like going away from my children.
We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children.
Fiction becomes a place where I face certain fears such as losing language or losing my children.
Women find men attractive who are aggressive... but later on, they get worried that that aggression, that alpha energy, is going to be turned back against them and their children.
Our kids fear going to school in the morning, and their parents worry whether they will come home safely at the end of the day.
On 'Heavy Rain,' the game started with something that happened to me when I lost my son, my six-year-old boy, in a mall. I was so scared. I was curious to see if I could create that impression, that fear, in a game, an interactive experience.
It's sad that my daughter will get attention because of her daddy. I'm already watching her run around the house and pick up microphones. It's scary.
Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear, but the fact is, the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte, my first child, was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.
What I was really into as a kid, anything that drove my mother crazy or made her nervous, and not much has changed.
I saw some comments in regards to my son, people saying: 'I hope your son gets corona.' That's the hard part for me. If you respond to that, people then go: 'Ah, we've got him' and they keep doing it.
When I travel with my kids abroad, I am not myself, but I'm more a father who wants to protect them. Sometimes, I am even aggressive about certain things and get surprised seeing myself like that: for instance, when people want to take pictures of them. I am fine if they want to take my pictures, but they are not public property.
