What's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double espressos.
Alison GopnikRead
I've had three of my own children and spent my professional life thinking about children. And yet I still find my relation to my children deeply puzzling.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Parenting is complex and often confounding, even for those who study it.
In this quote, Alison Gopnik reflects on the intricate and sometimes perplexing relationship that parents have with their children. Despite her personal experience as a mother and her professional focus on child development, she acknowledges that understanding this dynamic remains a challenging and mysterious endeavor, illustrating the complexities of familial bonds and the psychological aspects of parenting.
Themes
ParentingChildrenRelationshipsUnderstandingComplexity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a parenting workshop to illustrate the complexities of raising children.
More from Alison Gopnik
All quotes βOurs is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb.
Alison GopnikRead
Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.
Alison GopnikRead
Similar quotes
I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: 'Checkout Time is 18 years.'
Erma BombeckRead
My ideal of womanhood has always been the pioneer woman who fought and worked at her husband's side. She bore the children, kept the home fires burning; she was the hub of the family, the planner and the dreamer.
Lucille BallRead
The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career.
C. S. LewisRead
For I am my mother's daughter, and the drums of Africa still beat in my heart.
Mary Mcleod BethuneRead
A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary.
Dorothy Canfield FisherRead
You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little bigger then they are today. This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today mama. It will be over before you know it.
Jen HatmakerRead