Quotes About Responsibility

In the very instant of his birth, I associated Kevin with my own limitations—with not only suffering, but defeat.   Eva

There's something nihilistic about not having children

Blame confers an awesome power. And it's simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims but to culprits most of all. It imposes order on slag. Blame conveys clear lessons in which others may take comfort: if only she hadn't -- , and by implication makes tragedy avoidable. There may even be a fragile peace to be found in the assumption of total responsibility...

Il ragazzo è cattivo perché sua mamma è una ubriacona o un rottame. Gli lascia fare quello che vuole. Non gli insegna la differenza tra ciò che è giusto e ciò che è sbagliato. Non è a casa quando torna da scuola. Nessuno dice mai che suo padre è un ubriacone, o che non è a casa quando lui torna da scuola. E nessuno dice che alcuni di questi ragazzi sono solo maledettamente cattivi.

The liberation of adulthood as we'd conceived it from below was a pipe-dream; with oppressors deposed we became our own tyrants.

take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.) Those, as best I can recall, are the pygmy misgivings I weighed beforehand, and I've tried not to

is, it seems to be the same folks who are inclined to sue builders who did not perfectly protect them from the depredations of an earthquake who will be the first to claim that their son failed his math test because of attention deficit disorder, and not because he spent the night before at a video arcade instead of studying complex fractions.

Kevin folded his arms and looked satisfied; I had gone back to playing Mother. "I knew exactly what I was doing." He leaned onto his elbows. "And I'd do it again." "I

Blame confers an awesome power. And it's simplifying, not only to onlookers and victims, but to culprits most of all.

catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had

The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children's lunch boxes.

A los profesores se les culpaba de cualquier cosa que funcionara mal con los muchachos y a la vez se recurría a ellos como si fueran los únicos capaces de salvarlos. Ese doble papel de chivo expiatorio y salvador era a todas luces mesiánico, con la única diferencia de que, probablemente, Jesús estaba mejor pagado.

La paternidad es el pago de una deuda. Pero… ¿quién quiere pagar una deuda de la que puede escaparse? En apariencia, quienes no tienen hijos se libran con alguna artimaña. Además, ¿de qué sirve pagar una deuda a quien no se la debes? Sólo la madre más retorcida siente compensados sus desvelos por el hecho de que, finalmente, la vida de su hija resulte tan horrorosa como la suya.

Everything works, doesn't it? At least if you're white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they're not needed. In a sense, it's as if there's nothing more to do.

Men have always gotten to name children after themselves, while not doing any of the work.

It's not your job to be *pre-disappointed* for him, dig? You...go on and on about how big and terrible 'the world' is. Well, maybe so. But in that case, it's the world's job to be big and terrible, not yours.

The concept of duty was foreign to her, and it was only the people who acknowledged duty, and who had regard for duty, who got saddled with

He appeared to believe that because the university owed him his salary, it would ipso facto pay his salary, in a confusion of should and will that bordered on dyslexic.

It was never possible to do something back to someone that would undo what he had done to you.

We can be world-beaters, and run whole companies, and then claim to be traumatized by a hand on our knee when helplessness is politically useful.

This pervasive craving to be recognized as special amounted to an abdication of power, an outsourcing of your core responsibilities. I spurned the fawning of strangers, but I did feel special to myself. I had found that "feeling special" was a private experience, and no one else's projected fascination could substitute for quiet absorption in your own life.

how curious it was that couples with the largest families were so frequently the very people least capable of supporting them

What do you make of the proposition that the definition of a truly free society is a place where you can still get away with something?

For men, incompetence was a gambit: I'm terrible at this; you do it .