Unlike Western parents, reminding my child of Lord Voldemort didn't bother me.
Men will now get up and walk with the baby in the middle of the night, change its diapers, and give it a bottle, but in their heart of hearts they still think they shouldn't have to.
I have to admit, I never watch television; once in a while I'll see things, but I grew up without it. I had a father who said, 'I hate television;' it came into being when he was a kid, and he didn't have it, so he didn't think I needed it.
When I was growing up in the 50s it wasn't quite the same. Fathers were more protective and now they see all of the possibilities for their daughters.
All of us wish we'd had perfect childhoods, with a mother and father who modeled ideal parental attitudes and taught us to internalize the tenets of self-love. Many of us, however, did not.
Parents' tolerance of violence is so different to their tolerance of sexuality. If violence is involved in the sexuality it's somehow perceived as entertainment, but if love is involved with sexuality it's seen as pornographic and is not acceptable.
The mother's and father's attitudes toward the child correspond to the child's own needs.... Mother has the function of making himsecure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.
There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.
There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.
I think something that really shocked me as a nanny were parents who sort of assumed the worst from the get-go. People who didn't accept the benefit of the doubt.
Even in areas like the most depressed region of India in terms of female education, namely Rajasthan, which has [one of] the lowest female literacy [rates] in India. Even there, 80 to 90 percent of the parents would like their girls to go to school. And indeed, about 80 percent would like them to be made compulsory.
If you aren't a reader and you have a kid with his face buried in books, it can be a bit threatening. My parents viewed my reading as somewhat effeminate, but also subversive on some level.
