
"There are two different ways you could think about being a parent, and one that’s become very common since the end of the 20th century is a kind of carpentry model. The idea is that if you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the kind of adult you wanted."
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"All of us gardeners know that nothing comes out the way you planned. It’s a different garden every year, and it’s always sort of different from what you were thinking when you began. What it really means to be a good gardener is to work hard to produce an ecosystem that will have enough diversity, enough possibilities, so it’s robust, and it’s resilient, and it can change when the seasons change. And that kind of robust, unexpected, variable, messy system—that’s what you want to create when you’re having children, too. At least, that’s what the science suggests is the evolutionary point of childhood."
Click here to read more of McLean's interview with Alison Gopnik, author of The Gardener and the Carpenter.
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"All of us gardeners know that nothing comes out the way you planned. It’s a different garden every year, and it’s always sort of different from what you were thinking when you began. What it really means to be a good gardener is to work hard to produce an ecosystem that will have enough diversity, enough possibilities, so it’s robust, and it’s resilient, and it can change when the seasons change. And that kind of robust, unexpected, variable, messy system—that’s what you want to create when you’re having children, too. At least, that’s what the science suggests is the evolutionary point of childhood."
Click here to read more of McLean's interview with Alison Gopnik, author of The Gardener and the Carpenter.