David Brooks

The thing I would do differently is

It's taken me really my adulthood to get out of my head and into my heart and to be a little less cognitive and a little more emotional and emotionally expressive.

And that was not how I was raised.

I think we had a loving home, but we never said I love you to each other.

That would never have happened in my home.

And I did say that with my kids.

And I remember once my mom looked at me playing with my kids and she said, have you raised your kids in the opposite way that you were raised?

And I thought, yeah, pretty much, pretty much.

But I should have been more emotionally open about it.

to them and more emotionally expressive.

That's taken me a lifetime.

And I think with age, you get a little more emotionally vulnerable.

And even today, it's hard for me to be as emotionally expressive as I feel with them.

Because once you get a relationship, you lock in a certain mode of communication.

It's hard to break out of the way you're traditionally relating to each other.

Yeah, vastly, I think so.

If you go back to the 1940s,

It had good sides and bad sides.

It was very hard for men to express their love for their kids or even to demonstrate it.

And they didn't feel a particular need.