"If being a parent, especially a parent of young children, is a pretty awful kind of work, it's a pretty great kind of love, at least for most of us. The love we feel for our young children and the love they feel for us is simultaneously unconditional and intimate, morally profound and sensually immediate. The most important rewards of being a parent aren't your children's grades and trophies – or even their graduations and weddings. They come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child's moment-by-moment joy in being with you.
"Love doesn't have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. The purpose is not to change the people we love, but to give them what they need to thrive. Love's purpose is not to shape our beloved's destiny, but to help them shape their own. It isn't to show them the way, but to help them find a path for themselves, even if the path they take isn't one we would choose ourselves, or even one we would choose for them.
"The purpose of loving children, in particular, is to give those helpless young human beings a rich, stable, safe environment – an environment in which variation, innovation, and novelty can blossom. This is true both from a biological and evolutionary point of view and from a personal and political one. Loving children doesn't give them a destination; it gives them sustenance for the journey."
