It’s a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But

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And that’s the first reason Winnicott gives for the mother’s “hatred” of the child: “the baby is not her own (mental) conception.” On the one hand that is what makes a child so genuinely amazing: their potential to surprise us with their development, their unfurling beyond what we know or could imagine. It is also what makes the child infuriating:

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