I suspect an integral part of aging is looking at young people and making generalizations about them. We idealize the "good old days" and talk about the "way it was when we were kids." Okay, I'm guilty. I love children, but I love them far less than I used to. Despite all the ways in which I can look back on my childhood and take stock of inadequate parenting, I'm particularly critical of parenting in contemporary, middle-class America. Though I don't have children, I certainly see enough children and young adults to make some observations. The first is that most parents shouldn't be parents. I wonder about the motivation for replication. In other words, the why of the compulsion for biological reproduction? I have a dear friend who has two daughters, both adopted. I was stunned many years ago when she, perfectly able to carry and bear children, decided that she neither wanted to be pregnant nor to have a biological child. She figured there are hundreds of thousands of children in the world who need homes, and thus, there was no reason for pregnancy. I kinda thought she was nuts, but I realize that I'm nuts. What she did makes perfect sense to me now. She is a parent--as much a parent as any other parent I know, and two kids who were in an orphanage now have loving parents.

Lots of people have children because they need them. There is a way in which being a parent fulfills a primal need to love and be loved, to feel special, bonded and complete. Parenting ranks among the most idealized occupations ever, and I don't think many folks sit down and look at themselves critically before deciding to have a child. How many people really ponder, prior to having a baby, their fitness for parenting; their reasons for parenting? How many folks take parenting classes or go to counseling to figure out their suitability for parenting? So this is what we get in far too many cases: Parents who are completely unable to separate themselves from their children; parents who suffocate their children with their own neediness; parents who refuse to let their children develop their own sense of self; parents who believe that discipline and good manners somehow harm children's "self-esteem." Parents who are "helicopters." Parents who try to shield their children from the inevitable vagaries of living life in this world. So how do you instill or encourage self-esteem when you don't have it? And how do young people who have always been sheltered learn to live in the world? Sometimes you gotta skin your knee. It's gonna bleed. You may not have a band-aid in the house, but you're likely to survive.

My students often tell me that their parents, particularly their mother, are their best friends. I find that concerning and not quite the way they ought to be characterizing the relationship between parent and child. Boundaries are fuzzy. Kids are confused. And as the intensive, middle-class, child-centered parents continue to parent, the rates of depression, mental illness and other maladies among children and youth soar. In general, I ponder the consequences of growing up believing that you are the center of the universe, the entire universe. What are the consequences of material excess? What are the consequences of a relative lack of discipline? And I'm absolutely against spanking or hitting children, but even toddlers know when their behavior is unacceptable. Who hasn't seen the sly glance of a toddler who knows she's doing something of which her parents don't approve? Is "time out" now also too damaging to the fragile self-esteem of kids?

I would not have been a good parent. I know that now. I didn't know that when I thought I wanted to have two children. I didn't have good models and many parents didn't. I loved my parents, my mother in particular, dearly, but my mother wasn't able to teach me how to be a good mother. I know that I thought I needed a child to fill the various voids in me. I know I would have tried to compensate for all of the ways in which I felt myself to be both emotionally and materially deprived. I'm too judgmental to be a parent. At the time I would have been parent to a young child, I would have been so completely emotionally inadequate that I would have failed miserably at parenting. The good news is that many children survive inadequate parenting, emotionally crippled parents. The bad news is that many children don't.

And then there are the parents, mothers in particular, feminists who are immediately transformed into mothers--just mothers. Defined by mothering. Defined by motherhood. Acquiring, in a moment's notice, the authority to take on the most incredibly awesome responsibility in the universe. The toughest job in the world gets the least training and attention. Parenting is something we just do. Make a baby; be a parent. SNAP!

Perhaps I adore infants because they haven't yet become... I love the feel and smell of them; the way they sleep, and the cooing sounds. I take it back. I love children; I mostly don't like parents. Some unsolicited advice:

Your child is not the center of MY universe. I don't want to witness the incredible numbers of rude behaviors that you find cute and charming. And yeah, I'm kinda shocked when they shout at you, spit on you, hit you, call you a liar, scream just because they can or, worse yet, because they're unhappy with you. I'm shocked when they make unreasonable demands to which you capitulate. I'm shocked by the ways in which parents indulge inappropriate behaviors and change plans because Jojo is misbehaving.

I know some folks who are exceptional parents--not many, but some. They love their children fiercely, but they have not let their children consume them. There is a healthy disinterest (not the best word, but I can't think of another). An undisciplined child is an unhappy child, and a child that no one wants to be around, except you, of course.