Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

Another parent's different approach raises the possibility that you've made a mistake with your child. We simply can't tolerate that because we fear that any mistake no matter how minor could have devastating consequences. So we proclaim the superiority of our own choices. We've lost sight of the fact that people have preferences.

One of the darkest deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear but the fact is the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte my first child was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

Mine are the deep-seated fears established when we are children and they never quite go away: the fear of being helpless the fear of being trapped the fear of being out of control.

A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people it has its sky and its abysses a sky without stars abysses into which no light can ever penetrate.

No one should have to choose between medicine and other necessities. No one should have to use the emergency room every time a child gets sick. And no one should have to live in constant fear that a medical problem will become a financial crisis.

Even as we enumerate their shortcomings the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong who will protect us? If they are not imperfect how can we equal them?