We depend on the guarantee in our children's faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are … - Andrew Solomon

In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own.

A wise psychiatrist once said to me, "People want to get better, but they don't want to change." But I would propose that it is only by allowing people born with horizontal identities not to change that one allows them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else.

Our children are not us: they carry throwback genes and recessive traits and are subject right from the start to environmental stimuli beyond our control. And yet we are our children; the reality of being a parent never leaves those who have braved the metamorphosis.