“In some sense every parent does love their children. But some parents are too broken to love them well& others are barely able to love them at all..”

“Some things were not possible in this world. Children did not have two parents who refused to love them. One, maybe, but for pity's sake, not two.”

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”

“It may be that psychologists are off-base in their preoccupation with children’s need to feel that their father or some other parent loves them. It also seems valid to consider the child’s desire to feel that a parent actually likes them, as love itself is so automatic and preprogrammed in a parent that it isn’t a very good test of whatever it is that the typical child feels so anxious to pass the test of”

“For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.”

“It's quite sad that so many children go through life unsure whether their parents love them or not.”