Laurel van der Toorn

And then on the weekend, it's family time.

And we do not engage with work on that.

That could have been a value that was instilled.

And I'm guessing it wasn't.

I mean, the healthy, mature perspective of any parent should be, I want my kid to do better than me and have more than me and be happier than me.

And if you can't get down with that in reality, I might look at why.

What is it that's so threatening there?

Well, I'm not a lawyer and certainly not an expert in contract law, but I would say that, you know, a child could not consent to a reciprocal relationship, one where they are expected to pay back anything that you give them, even if it's only partial, even if they're only paying interest.

That's not how it works.

I think parenting is one of the most challenging jobs because there is no guarantee of dividends.

And I think a lot of people go into it expecting that and experience a lot of stress and dissatisfaction because they thought it was going to be something different.

Because most other relationships in our lives, other than parenting, parent-child relationships, are somewhat reciprocal.

You go to work and your boss pays you.

You know, you go to school and you do your work and your teacher teaches you.

So parent-child is really an exceptional relationship that a lot of us are still struggling to understand.

Yeah, it's super complex because pride and grief and loneliness and resentment all can coexist at the same time and they don't cancel each other out.

For some people, one of those emotions might be louder than the other, but that doesn't mean that the others are not salient.

I would.

I mean, it's complicated because particularly for women raising children, there's a whole lot of social conditioning about what it means to be a good mom.

And women are just kind of socialized to be self-sacrificing.