Parenting Woes Quotes

When a child is given to his parents, a crown is made for that child in Heaven, and woe to the parents who raise a child without consciousness of that eternal crown!

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.

...Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can be understood. Most people carry around a load of feeling that they bury or pretend is not there because it is too painful and alarming to cope with or because it involved unbearable guilt. Anger against a parent, for example. I knew the tide of woe was rising, that woe that seizes me like anger, and is a form of anger, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it, so I got up and picked flowers, cooked my dinner, looked at the news, all the same usual routine that can ward off the devils or suddenly clear the air as when a thunderstorm seems to be coming and then dissipates….it always happens when there is a galaxy of problems that get knit together into one huge outcry against the sense of being abandoned or orphanhood…

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other’s powers in a curious sort of homage—heard in adult life decades down the line—to a small child’s awe at their own parents’ apparently miraculous capacities.

Ah lucklesse babe, borne vnder cruell starre, And in dead parents balefull ashes bred, Full litle weenest thou, what sorrowes are Left thee for portion of thy liuelihed, Poore Orphane in the wide world scattered, As budding braunch rent from the natiue tree, And throwen forth, till it be withered: Such is the state of men: thus enter wee Into this life with woe, and end with miseree.

Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are: Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depth, of the city. As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black track along the carriages’ migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure. To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Palimpsest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not. The wise arrive early with a neat coil of hooked rope at their waist, so that if a train is in a very great hurry, they may catch it still, and ride behind on the pauper’s terrace with the rest of those who were not favored, or fast enough, or precise in their calculations. Woe betide them in the infrequent mating seasons! No train may be asked to make its regular stops when she is in heat! A man was once caught on board when an express caught the scent of a local. The poor banker was released to a platform only eight months later, when the two white leviathans had relinquished each other with regret and tears.

Satan represents God’s law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading men to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. “In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” Hebrews 2:17. If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are.” Hebrews 4:15.

The idea of the “job” as the answer to all woes, individual and social, is one of the most pernicious myths of modern society. It is promoted by politicians, parents, newspaper moralists and leaders of industry, on the left and on the right: paradise, they say, is “full employment.

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other’s powers in a curious sort of homage—heard in adult life decades down the line—to a small child’s awe at their own parents’ apparently miraculous capacities. To

Now, religion professes a special role in the protection and instruction of children. "Woe to him," says the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, "who harms a child." The New Testament has Jesus informing us that one so guilty would be better off at the bottom of the sea, and with a millstone around his neck at that. But both in theory and in practice, religion uses the innocent and the defenseless for the purposes of experiment. By all means let an observant Jewish adult male have his raw-cut penis placed in the mouth of a rabbi. (That would be legal, at least in New York.) By all means let grown women who distrust their clitoris or their labia have them sawn away by some other wretched adult female. By all means let Abraham offer to commit filicide to prove his devotion to the Lord or his belief in the voices he was hearing in his head. By all means let devout parents deny themselves the succor of medicine when in acute pain and distress. By all means - for all I care - let a priest sworn to celibacy be a promiscuous homosexual. By all means let a congregation that believes in whipping out the devil choose a new grown-up sinner each week and lash him until he or she bleeds. By all means let anyone who believes in creationism instruct his fellows during lunch breaks. But the conscription of the unprotected child for these purposes is something that even the most dedicated secularist can safely describe as sin.

The child's world is alert and alive, governed by rules of response and command, not by physical laws: a portentous continuum of consciousness, endowed with purpose and intent, either resistant or responsive to the child itself. This infantile notion of a world governed by moral rather than physical laws, kept under control by a superordinated parental personality instead of impersonal physical forces, and oriented to the weal and woe of man, is an illusion that dominates men's thoughts all over the world. The sense then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously subjective and objective experience (Participation), which is all alive (Animism), and which was created by a superior being (Artificialism), may be said to constitute the frame of reference of all childhood experience no matter where in the world. No small wonder then, that the above Three Principles are precisely those most represented in the mythologies and religious systems of the whole world.

You are not conscious of having grossly violated any moral low. But have you never heard of a gentleman in India who had a tame leopard that went about his house? It was as playful as a cat, and did no one any harm till one day, as he lay asleep, the leopard licked his hand, and licked until it had licked a sore place and tasted blood. After that there was nothing for it but to destroy it; for all the leopard-nature was aroused by that taste of blood. And some of you young people, with all the godly associations that are round about you, will — I am always afraid — get a taste of the devilry outside, of the world’s vice and sin; and then there is the leopard’s nature in you. If you once get the taste and flavor of it, you will be prone to be always thirsting for it. Then, instead of the hope we now cherish, that we shall soon see you at your parents’ side, serving Christ — see you take your father’s place, young man, in after-years — see you, young woman, grow up to be a matron in the Church of God, bringing many others to the Savior — we may have to lament that the children are not as the parents, and cry, “Woe is the day that ever they were born.

As youngest among us, but small no more, Your life can be trying, for we have the chore Of becoming your teachers, a terrible bore. "We've got experience! Take it from me!" "We've done this all before, you see. We know the ropes, we know the same." Since time immemorial, always the same. One's own shortcomings are nothing but fluff, But everyone else's are heavier stuff: Faultfinding comes easy when this is our plight, But it's hard for your parents, try as they might, To treat you with fairness, and kindness as well; Nitpicking's a habit that's hard to dispel. Men you're living with old folks, all you can do Is put up with their nagging -- it's hard but it's true. The pill may be bitter, but down it must go, For it's meant to keep the peace, you know. The many months here have not been in vain, Since wasting time noes against your Brain. You read and study nearly all the day, Determined to chase the boredom away. The more difficult question, much harder to bear, Is "What on earth do I have to wear? I've got no more panties, my clothes are too tight, My shirt is a loincloth, I'm really a siaht! To put on my shoes I must off my toes, Dh dear, I'm plagued with so many woes!

They sighed: "This leadeth to captivity-- Perchance destruction, ending dark and dire. Yet must we yield to human liberty Its own, e'en though a brand from freedom's fire Kindle for freedom's self the fatal pyre." So saying, they anointed one their king Who craved the crown, by patriot son and sire Put by in pure denial, lest it bring First care, then crime, and waken woes then slumbering. For though a king see duty's pathway plain, And walk therein, as he who now arose; What monarch from misrule can all refrain, When privilege lifts power o'er friends and foes? Rare is the reign untarnished to the close, And rarer still the blameless dynasty. Ofttimes as princes the unkingliest pose, Because, forsooth, they come of some tall tree, Whose root and trunk were sound, while branches blasted be. True kingliness--what else proves man a king? A slave, though throned and sceptered, bides a slave; Nor pride, nor pelf, nor all that power may bring, Can make the serf a sovereign, or yet save The dust of either from the common grave. Royal the soul must be, or comes to end All royalty. Spirit, then blood, God gave; And each at last its separate way doth wend Home to the parent source, to meet no more, nor blend.

We can cry tears for our abandoning of God, tears for our betrayals of love, tears for our children, parents, friends and animals, tears for our denials of love, tears for our judgments of love, tears for the loss of our cherished yet naïve ideals about love, tears for our separations from love, tears for things we know not what we are crying for, and there is no need to know. We can cry tears of compassion for others’ pain as our own, we cry tears for our own heartbreak. We can cry and laugh at the same time, feeling both sadness and joy, heartbreak and hilarity. In this, we are not attached to the negative emotion (from the soul’s perspective) and can feel both sides of release and expansion at the same time. Tears of sweet madness, tears of pain, tears of sorrow, tears like honey that drip like nectar, remaking anew all that they touch. There are the tears of sweet sorrow, being the vessel for the woes of the world to be felt on behalf of all; someone has to cry if no one else does. The tears of grief as you feel your deepest pains with the aid of your greatest love of all loves, God; the tears of the sheer joy of the soul, the tears of loving orgasm as you make love with your Beloved whilst in prayer with God; the intimate tears of adoration for a Soul Mate in the act of making love, as the soul is touched on every level of love, human and Divine. Tears of gratitude, being touched by God in new and virgin places that have always been pure; tears of being touched in the ecstatic yearning, desire, shaking prayer and inflowing of God’s Love; tears borne from your desire to receive that love so keenly, so heartfully; tears of expansion and release. The intimacy of tears of adoration, of wondrous awe and loving gratitude for Beloved God, and more, and more, and more … Some tears can never be described, for they encompass all emotions at the same time. I wish you these tears of all tears.

Woes of a 25th century kid: "All of my friends have intergalactic UFOs but my parents aren't buying them for me. I hope they give me a surprise gift because my birthday is on the fourth of June, the independence day of USNA !

Suppose it were offered to the father of three children to take his choice whether two should be received into heaven and one condemned to hell, or the whole should be annihilated in death. What would a parent say? Where is the father who would dare to secure the bliss of two children at the cost of the endless misery of one? Which of the family would he select as the victim, whose undying pain should secure his brother's immortal joy? Is there any one living who would not suffer himself and his children to sink back again into nothingness, rather than purchase heaven at such a price? Now, if so, if we should so act in the case of our own children, we are bound morally to make the same choice with respect to every one. No moral being would consent to purchase eternal happiness at the price of another's eternal woe. Hence it follows that a future life, on the popular view, is an evil to the human race, not to the wicked, but to all. For if annihilation of the whole race should be tendered as the alternative, no moral being could, as has been shown, refuse to accept it." -BARLOW, Eternal Punishment.

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

And it was all there, in her lovely face. The lines, high on her cheeks, were the dams she used to keep the tears in her eyes. Unspoken, unanswerable questions parented her full, red lips, whenever she was alone, or absorbed in her work. Determination stiffened the defiant thrust of her cleft chin. And her forehead was always slightly creased in the centre, between the brows, as if she was grasping, in those soft folds of skin, the monstrous and pitiable understanding that no happiness exists without its woe, no wealth without its cost, and no life without its full measure, sooner or later, of sorrowing and death.

Find Yourself a Therapist As my colleague Anna Borges has written,13 instead of asking, “Do I need therapy?” a better question is “How might I benefit from therapy?” Therapy isn’t just for people dealing with trauma or serious mental health issues; you can also talk to a therapist about dating woes, setting boundaries with friends, tension with your parents or siblings, job stress, low-level anxiety or sadness, and pretty much anything else that’s a source of difficulty in your life. And just because you go to therapy once, you aren’t locked into going forever; it can absolutely be a shorter-term deal. If you care about being emotionally intelligent, feeling your best, and having good relationships, therapy can be a great addition to your showing-up routine. Food

(Amavia's suicide) But if that carelesse heauens (quoth she) despise The doome of iust reuenge, and take delight To see sad PAGEANTS OF MEN'S MISERIES, As bound by them to liue in liues despight, Yet can they not warne death from wretched wight. Come then, come soone, come sweetest death to mee, And take away this LONG LENT LOATHED LIGHT: Sharpe be thy wounds, but sweet the medicines bee, That long captiued soules from wearie thraldome free. But thou, sweet Babe, whom frowning froward fate Hath made sad witnesse of thy fathers fall, Sith heauen thee deignes to hold in liuing state, Long maist thou liue, and better thriue withall, Then to thy lucklesse parents did befall: Liue thou, and to thy mother dead attest, That cleare she dide from blemish criminall; Thy litle hands embrewd in bleeding brest Loe I for pledges leaue. So giue me leaue to rest. With that a deadly shrieke she forth did throw, That through the wood reecchoed againe, And after gaue a grone so deepe and low, That seemd her tender heart was rent in twaine, Or thrild with point of thorough piercing paine; As gentle Hynd, whose sides with cruell steele Through launched, forth her bleeding life does raine, Whiles the sad pang approching she does feele, Brayes out her latest breach, and vp her eyes doth seele. Which when that warriour heard, dismounting straict From his tall steed, he rusht into the thicke, And soone arriued, where that sad pourtraict Of death and dolour lay, halfe dead, halfe quicke, In whose white alabaster brest did sticke A cruell knife, that made a griesly wound, From which forth gusht a streme of gorebloud thick, That all her goodly garments staind around, And into a deepe sanguine dide the grassie ground. Pittifull spectacle of deadly smart, Beside a bubbling fountaine low she lay, Which she increased with her bleeding hart, And the cleane waues widi purple gore did ray; Als in her lap a louely babe did play His cruell sport, in stead of sorrow dew; For in her streaming blood he did embay His litle hands, and tender ioynts embrew; Pitifull spectacle, as euer eye did view. Out of her gored wound the cruell steele He lighdy snatcht, and did the floudgate stop With his faire garment: then gan softly feele Her feeble pulse, to proue if any drop Of liuing bloud yet in her veynes did hop; Which when he felt to moue, he hoped faire To call backe life to her forsaken shop. ... Not one word more she sayd But breaking off, the end for want of breath, And slyding soft, as downe to sleepe her layd, And ended all her woe in quiet death. That seeing good Sir Guyon, could vneath From tears abstaine, for griefe his hart did grate, And from so heauie sight his head did wreath, Accusing fortune, and too cruell fate, Which plunged had faire Ladie in so wretched state. Then turning to his Palmer said, Old syre Behold the image of mortalitie, And feeble nature cloth’d with fleshly tyre, When raging passion with fierce tyrannie Robs reason of her due regalitie, And makes it seruant to her basest part: The strong it weakens with infirmitie, And with bold furie armes the weakest hart; The strong through pleasure soonest falles, the weake through smart.

Eight States limit private insurance plan coverage of abortion. Seventeen require medically incorrect counseling before abortion, including disinformation about breast cancer, fetal pain, and mental woes. Contrary to the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics,27 39 States require parental involvement.

We were born in the mist of time on this land together with the oaks and fir trees. We are bound to it not only by the bread and existence it furnishes us as we toil on it, but also by all the bones of our ancestors who sleep in its ground. All our parents are here. All our memories, all our war-like glory, all our history here, in this land lies buried. . . . By what right do the Jews wish to take this land from us? On what historical argument do they base their pretensions and particularly the audacity with which they defy us Romanians, here in our own land? We are bound to this land by millions of tombs and millions of unseen threads that only our soul feels, and woe to those who shall try to snatch us from it.

Parenting is all about killing time until the kids are old enough to move out,

Despite his business woes, Steve did have reasons to smile. If he was adrift professionally, he was starting to settle personally, in a way that gave him great satisfaction. His daughter Lisa had just come to live with him and Laurene. This was a complicated kind of atonement on his part, given the way he had immaturely and irresponsibly tried to deny his paternity. And the impending arrival of his son, Reed, excited this very untypical man in a deeply normal way. Reed, of course, was the first child he had planned for, and when he arrived in October, Steve reacted as so many fathers do—he became a know-it-all, in that deadly serious way that’s deeply amusing to parents who have been through the exercise. “They were classic new parents,” remembers Mike Slade. “They did everything wrong. They were both hippies, right? So the kid was in their bed the whole time, the kid was only breastfed. So what did the kid do? Let’s see, he screamed all the time and he was hungry all the time ’cause, duh, right? So within a week they looked like prison camp survivors.

The 49-year-old Bryant, who resembles a cereal box character himself with his wide eyes, toothy smile, and elongated chin, blames Kellogg's financial woes on the changing tastes of fickle breakfast eaters. The company flourished in the Baby Boom era, when fathers went off to work and mothers stayed behind to tend to three or four children. For these women, cereal must have been heaven-sent. They could pour everybody a bowl of Corn Flakes, leave a milk carton out, and be done with breakfast, except for the dishes. Now Americans have fewer children. Both parents often work and no longer have time to linger over a serving of Apple Jacks and the local newspaper. Many people grab something on the way to work and devour it in their cars or at their desks while checking e-mail. “For a while, breakfast cereal was convenience food,” says Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal. “But convenience is relative. It's more convenient to grab a breakfast bar, yogurt, a piece of fruit, or a breakfast sandwich at some fast-food place than to eat a bowl of breakfast cereal.” People who still eat breakfast at home favor more laborintensive breakfasts, according to a recent Nielsen survey. They spend more time at the stove, preparing oatmeal (sales were up 3.5 percent in the first half of 2014) and eggs (up 7 percent last year). They're putting their toasters to work, heating up frozen waffles, French toast, and pancakes (sales of these foods were up 4.5 percent in the last five years). This last inclination should be helping Kellogg: It owns Eggo frozen waffles. But Eggo sales weren't enough to offset its slumping U.S. cereal numbers. “There has just been a massive fragmentation of the breakfast occasion,” says Julian Mellentin, director of food analysis at research firm New Nutrition Business. And Kellogg faces a more ominous trend at the table. As Americans become more healthconscious, they're shying away from the kind of processed food baked in Kellogg's four U.S. cereal factories. They tend to be averse to carbohydrates, which is a problem for a company selling cereal derived from corn, oats, and rice. “They basically have a carb-heavy portfolio,” says Robert Dickerson, senior packagedfood analyst at Consumer Edge. If such discerning shoppers still eat cereal, they prefer the gluten-free kind, sales of which are up 22 percent, according to Nielsen. There's also growing suspicion of packagedfood companies that fill their products with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For these breakfast eaters, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam may seem less like friendly childhood avatars and more like malevolent sugar traffickers.

13 O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. 14 Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all the earth. 15 But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love. 16 And I desire that ye should remember to observe the statutes and the judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning. 17 My heart hath been weighed down with sorrow from time to time, for I have feared, lest for the hardness of your hearts the Lord your God should come out in the fulness of his wrath upon you, that ye be cut off and destroyed forever;

O Dear God by Maisie Aletha Smikle Thank God He covers With His glory From up above Bestowing His grace On nations of race Shunned scorned and battered Four hundred years The tears they shed in pain Could flood the widest plains The prayers they prayed Could cover the largest ocean bed Justice refuted and rebutted Their spirits churn Perplexed they wondered If their excruciating pains Were in dire vain Their descendants Got no gain from their great grandparents pain and shame Descendants seek no justice For their great grand parents pains Instead descendants wrap their arms In acceptance that their great grandparents pains Were in grave vain Justice! Justice! If not for you But for your poor great grandparents Who knew only woe and sorrow and a life full of horror

Depression, sexual troubles, anxiety, loneliness, and guilt are the main problems that drive consumers into the recovery movement. Explaining such adult troubles as being caused by victimization during childhood does not accomplish much. Compare “wounded child” as an explanation to some of the other ways you might explain your problems: “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” or “sexually dysfunctional.” “Wounded child” is a more permanent explanation; “depressive” is less permanent. As we saw in the first section of this book, depression, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction—unlike being a wounded child—are all eminently treatable. “Wounded child” is also more pervasive in its destructive effects: “Toxic” is the colorful word used to describe its pervasiveness. “Depression,” “anxiety,” and “sexually dysfunctional” are all narrower, less damning labels, and this, in fact, is part of the reason why treatment works. So “wounded child” (unless you believe in catharsis cures) leads to more helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity than the alternatives. But it is less personal—your parents did it to you—than “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” and “sexually dysfunctional.” Impersonal explanations of bad events raise self-esteem more than personal ones. Therefore “wounded child” is better for raising your self-esteem and for lowering your guilt. Self-esteem has become very important to Americans in the last two decades. Our public schools are supposed to nurture the self-esteem of our children, our churches are supposed to minister to the self-esteem of their congregants, and the recovery movement is supposed to restore the self-esteem of victims. Attaining self-esteem, while undeniably important, is a goal that I have reservations about. I think it is an overinflated idea, and my opinion was formed by my work with depressed people. Depressed people, you will recall, have four kinds of problems: behavioral—they are passive, indecisive, and helpless; emotional—they are sad; bodily—their sleeping, eating, and sex are disrupted; cognitive—they think life is hopeless and that they are worthless. Only the second half of this last symptom amounts to low self-esteem. I have come to believe that lack of self-esteem is the least important of these woes. Once a depressed person becomes active and hopeful, self-esteem always improves. Bolstering self-esteem without changing hopelessness or passivity, however, accomplishes nothing. To put it exactly, I believe that low self-esteem is an epiphenomenon, a mere reflection that your commerce with the world is going badly. It has no power in itself. What needs improving is not self-esteem but your commerce with the world. So the one advantage of labeling yourself a victim—raised self-esteem—is minimal, particularly since victimhood raises self-esteem at the cost of greater hopelessness and passivity, and therefore worsens commerce with the world. This is indeed my main worry about the recovery movement. Young Americans right now are in an epidemic of depression. I have speculated on the causes in the last chapter of my book Learned Optimism, and I will not repeat my conjectures here. Young people are easy pickings for anything that makes them feel better—even temporarily. The recovery movement capitalizes on this epidemic. When it works, it raises self-esteem and lowers guilt, but at the expense of our blaming others for our troubles. Never mind the fact that those we blame did not in fact cause our troubles. Never mind the fact that thinking of ourselves as victims induces helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity. Never mind that there are more effective treatments available elsewhere.

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must be somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage - heard in adult life decades down the line - to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities.

Whenever a child is given to parents, a crown is made for it in Heaven; and woe to those parents if that child is not reared with a sense of responsibility to acquire that crown!