Why Do Parents Never Grow Out Of Parenthood?
Why Do Parents Never Grow Out Of Parenthood? The trouble with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood. Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to forever. When a child is a grown-up person, your parenthood is finished. The child needed it – he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child, they remain constant anxious to themselves and to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don’t help beyond a certain limit. To be a parent is great art. To give birth to children is nothing – any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents. And the criterion is that...