I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying; it was active, it was energetic, it was unrelenting. Parenting meant playing Mozart CDs while you were pregnant, doing without the epidural, and breast-feeding your child until it was old enough to unbutton your blouse. Parenting began with the assumption that your baby was a lump of clay that could be molded (through hard work, input, and positive reinforcement) into a perfect person who would someday be admitted to the college of your choice. Parenting was not simply about raising a child, it was about transforming a child, force-feeding it like a foie gras goose, altering, modifying, modulating, manipulating, smoothing out, improving. (Interestingly, the culture came to believe in the perfectibility of the child just as it also came to believe in the conflicting theory that virtually everything in human nature was genetic—thus proving that whoever said that a sign of intelligence was the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously did not know what he was talking about.)
    And by the way, all sorts of additional personnel were required to achieve the transformational effect that was the goal of parenting—baby whisperers, sleep counselors, shrinks, learning therapists, family therapists, speech therapists, tutors—and, if necessary, behavior-altering medication, which, coincidentally or uncoincidentally, was invented at almost the exact moment that parenting came into being.
    Parenting carried with it the implicit assumption that any time is quality time if the parent is in attendance. As a result, you were required to be in attendance at the most mundane activities—to watch, cheerlead, and, if necessary, coach, even if this meant throwing your weekend away by driving three hours and twenty minutes in each direction so that you could sit in a dark, hot locker room next door to a gym where your beloved child was going down to resounding defeat in a chess tournament you were not allowed to observe because your mere presence in the room would put unfair pressure on him or her. (The willingness on the part of both parents to be present at any place at any time had the interesting side effect of causing schools to rely on parents to oversee all sorts of events that used to be supervised by trained professionals.)
    Parenting meant that whether or not your children understood you, your obligation was to understand them; understanding was the key to everything. If your children believed you understood them, or at least tried to understand them, they wouldn’t hate you when they became adolescents; what’s more, they would grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults who would never have to squander their money (or, far more likely, yours) on psychoanalysis or whatever fashion in self-improvement had come along to take its place.
    Parenting used entirely different language from just plain parenthood, language you would never write in big capital letters in order to make clear that it had been uttered impulsively or in anger. So it went more or less like this:
     
I’m sure you didn’t mean to break Mommy’s antique vase, sweetheart.
We should talk about this.
I know how frustrated and angry you must feel right now.
Why don’t you go to your room and take a time-out and come back when you’re feeling better.
If you want, I’ll call Jessica’s mother to see what her reasoning is.
If you finish your homework, we can talk about the tiara.
    Stage Two: The Child Is an Adolescent
    Adolescence comes as a gigantic shock to the modern parent, in large part because it seems so much like the adolescence you yourself went through. Your adolescent is sullen. Your adolescent is angry. Your adolescent is mean. In fact, your adolescent is mean to you.
    Your adolescent says words you were not allowed to say while growing up, not that you had even heard of them until you read The Catcher in the Rye. Your adolescent is probably