As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized beha… - Adam Gopnik

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As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized behavior is artificial and ridiculous: it means pretending to be glad to see people you aren’t glad to see, praising parties you wished you hadn’t gone to, thanking friends for presents you wish you hadn’t received. Training kids to feign a passion is the art of parenting. The passions they really have belong only to them.

Adam Gopnik

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About Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik (born August 24, 1956) is an American writer and essayist. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism since 1986.

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Malcolm Gladwell Sydney J. Harris B. F. Skinner Paul Goodman Russell Baker

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Andre Agassi, in his account of becoming an embittered prodigy, seems never to have liked tennis much, except as a vehicle for achievement. The kids who do like life inside the lines can find the flow within that green-and-white geometry.

We disapprove of parental hovering not because it won’t pay off later—it might; it does!—but because it’s obnoxious now.

Child rearing is an art, and what makes art art is that it is doing several things at once.

As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized behavior is artificial and ridiculous: it means pretending to be glad to see people you aren’t… - Adam Gopnik

About Adam Gopnik

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