some mornings... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me.
Jennifer EganRead
I have a tendency to coddle my sons because I want to keep them safe, but I also want them to be strong and independent and curious and bold, and I worry that my coddling is going to have exactly the opposite effect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of a parent wanting to protect their children while also fostering their independence and strength.
In this quote, Jennifer Egan expresses the internal conflict that many parents face: the desire to protect their children through nurturing and care (coddling) versus the need to let them grow strong, independent, and curious. Egan acknowledges that while her intentions are to safeguard her sons, there is a risk that overprotection might hinder their development into confident individuals, prompting reflection on the balance between safety and empowerment in parenting.
Themes
ParentingIndependenceCoddlingStrengthChildren
In practice
Example use cases
In a parenting workshop to discuss the balance between nurturing and independence.
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All quotes βI think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
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I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.
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I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we're back in an earlier moment.
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We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
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